


Flaws In The Design

by starsandgraces



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: AU, F/M, Genderswap, M/M, Medical Procedures, Multiple Timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-07
Updated: 2010-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:54:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgraces/pseuds/starsandgraces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Near future AU. Leonard McCoy is working as a doctor in a small-town hospital one day, and the next he meets Hikaru Sulu, who says he's a robot from Leonard's future who's travelled back in time to change Leonard's life for the better. But for someone who claims he's come back to help, Hikaru keeps a hell of a lot of secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flaws In The Design

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for [startrekbigbang](http://community.livejournal.com/startrekbigbang/) and was thought up on a whim about a month before rough drafts were due, and I am never doing that again. My immeasurable thanks go to [withthepilot](http://withthepilot.livejournal.com/), who was not only my beta but also a huge part of why I never gave up on this fic. I couldn't have done it without her feedback and constant support. Thanks also go to [echoinautumn](http://echoinautumn.livejournal.com/) who alpha read for me to set my mind at ease and continued to talk me through things to the end.
> 
> And, of course, thanks to [littlewolfstar](http://littlewolfstar.livejournal.com/) for her [art](http://littlewolfstar.livejournal.com/215050.html) (despite being very busy in real life!) and [vengefuldemon69](http://vengefuldemon69.livejournal.com/) for her [mix](http://vengefuldemon69.livejournal.com/88145.html). You've both been wonderful throughout the whole process.

It started with an ending. Leonard shouldn't have been surprised that his life was so radically changed by the divorce, but when he looked back on the events that began that year, he realised it was a catalyst for far more than he could ever have imagined.

It would have been an easy divorce, as divorces go, if not for one thing. Neither one of them wanted to be married any more and neither one wanted to drag out the proceedings. Jocelyn wanted to be rid of her distracted, emotionally distant husband, and Leonard didn't want to have to think about anything other than his daughter and his projects. Joanna was the only good thing that had come out of the marriage—a fact that both of them agreed on. The custody battle was the difficult part.

"He's incapable of caring for himself half the time, let alone a child," Jocelyn snarled. "She's six years old and if Leonard had custody of her, she'd starve to death."

"I'd always be there for her. Hell, it's not like I'm going to go travelling across the globe on a whim with whichever man looks at me for longer than three seconds." Leonard crossed his arms and frowned. It was unfair of him, really. Jocelyn may have had an affair, but she'd only had one. That said, she did travel near-constantly, and that wasn't the life Leonard wanted for his daughter.

"Go to hell, Leonard," she said as they were leaving the courtroom. "You'll get Joanna over my dead body."

Thankfully, it didn't come to that. Jocelyn wanted to move to Los Angeles with her new boyfriend, while Leonard was happy to stay put—not to mention the fact that Jocelyn and her lawyer couldn't prove any of the claims that Leonard was in any way neglectful. He was a respectable local doctor, held in high regard by everyone who knew him. He knew Jo must have been asked which parent she'd rather stay with, but he never asked her. He didn't want to know.

They moved to a smaller house six months after the custody battle had ended. The old house had too many memories for both of them, and the new one brought them closer to some of Jo's friends and the school she was going to attend. Jocelyn came to visit a couple of months after they finished moving in.

"It's very... quaint," she said. "Do you like it here, Joanna?"

Jo shrugged her shoulders and clutched her bear more tightly to her chest. "I guess so, Mommy. I miss my old room. And I miss you."

"Well, you know you can visit Mommy," Leonard said. "In the summer and at Christmas. We'll fly all the way out to California and you get to see where Mommy works now and meet all her new friends." He managed to keep the slightly bitter note out of his voice.

"Won't that be nice?" she asked, kneeling down to hug Jo.

"Yeah," Jo whispered. Then she brightened. "Mommy, do you want to see my new room? I painted it with Daddy and we did it all by ourselves."

"I would love to see your room! Why don't you take me now?"

"I'm going to make some coffee," Leonard said, feeling inexplicably excluded. "Your usual?" Jocelyn nodded. "And Jo, honey, do you want some juice?"

"Yes, please." She nodded wildly, then grabbed her mother's hand and dragged her towards the staircase.

He stood in the kitchen for longer than he needed to, looking out of the window and trying to work out when his life went wrong. He and Jocelyn had been so in love in college. She'd been there for him whenever he needed her, and he thought he'd done the same for her. But in the end, they just drifted apart. He could still remember everything she liked and didn't like. Even though he'd hoped he wouldn't, Leonard remembered exactly how Jocelyn took her coffee, and made it without even having to think about it. He pulled a juice box from the fridge for Jo, loaded everything onto a tray with some cookies and took it all upstairs.

Jocelyn frowned slightly when she saw the cookies. "It's almost dinnertime," she said. "Should Joanna be eating snacks so late in the afternoon?"

"It's a special occasion," he replied. "I think she'll be okay just this once."

"Cookies are for good girls," Jo said, reaching out for the plate.

"Who told you that?"

"Janice did. She said I'm a very good girl and I get to have cookies as long as I stay good."

"Who's Janice?" Jocelyn asked, looking suspiciously at Leonard. "Someone special?"

"Janice Rand, Jo's babysitter," he said. He shot a meaningful look back at her. _I know what you're implying, and you're wrong_. "She's studying child psychology at the community college and she needed a job. Jo helps her all the time with her homework, don't you, darlin'?"

"Her car is _purple_ ," Jo said gleefully through a mouthful of cookie.

"Our daughter has priorities," Leonard said in explanation.

"Purple is the best colour. It makes me feel like hugs do. Then I like yellow next best. And then..."

Jo chattered nonstop through dinner, telling Jocelyn about everything that had happened in the six months since they'd last seen each other in person—even the things that she'd already told her on the phone. Then they went out into the backyard and Jo showed her mother how fast she could ride her tricycle around the small patch of grass in the centre.

"You're so clever, Jo!" Jocelyn said. "I can't believe how grown up you're getting. Next time I'm here, we'll go out and get you a big girl bike."

She skidded to a halt and stared at Jocelyn. "A purple one?" she asked, eyes wide. "With a bell on?"

"Of _course_ , silly. All the best big girl bikes are purple with bells on them."

They bathed her and put her to bed together. "I think this is the longest we've spent together without arguing in years," Leonard said quietly, watching Jo as she curled her fingers around the pillow.

"Your yard is a death-trap," Jocelyn murmured back, then she laughed softly. "Believe it or not, I have actually missed you. Both of you."

"I knew you'd miss her. I thought you stopped missing me a long time ago."

"So did I, Leonard, believe me." She sighed. "Do you have any wine in the house? I could really use a drink."

"You know I don't normally keep any around. But for you, I bought some especially."

He poured her a glass of red wine and himself a glass of bourbon, then took them back to the living room. Jocelyn was perched on the edge of the couch. She'd kicked off her shoes for the first time since arriving, and let her hair down from the tight bun she normally kept it in. She took an eager sip from the glass he offered her and then stared at him, her mouth twisting. "Leonard. This is swill."

"You didn't marry me for my taste in wine," he pointed out.

"No, I divorced you because of it." They both laughed and relaxed, leaning back into the cushions. "I've got to admit, you're coping better than I thought you would," she said, sipping more cautiously. "Joanna seems... settled. Happy."

"Janice was a lifesaver, I have to admit," Leonard said. "I don't know what would have happened if she hadn't come along when she did. I'd probably have had to quit my job at the hospital for something with less hours. But she picks Jo up from daycare when I can't get there, feeds her, teaches her all sorts of damn awful songs that children love... everything, really. Jo really loves her."

"Sounds like everything's worked out for you." She rubbed absently at the edge of the glass, polishing away an imaginary mark.

"How's L.A.? And your friend?"

"Clay and I broke up again," Jocelyn said casually. "I expect he'll come back within a week of me getting home. He'll probably have slept with someone else and beg me for forgiveness."

"And you're okay with that?" he asked, bemused. "That doesn't sound like you."

"It's just a different kind of relationship. You're not dating yet? I'm surprised. In this town, you're quite a catch."

"Jo doesn't need that kind of upheaval right now," he said, suddenly annoyed with her. "Which is why she's here and not out in California with you."

They both drank in silence for a while.

"Is the bottle in the kitchen?" Jocelyn asked.

"It is. Didn't you drive here?"

"I got a cab. I can have another drink if I like."

He sighed. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."

"Which part?" Jocelyn pursed her lips.

"All of it. Can you bring me the bourbon if you're getting some more wine?"

She looked briefly as if she was going to object, but went into the kitchen and came back with both bottles anyway. Leonard turned on the TV and flicked through the channels, looking for something interesting enough to watch or boring enough to make for decent background noise. He settled on a re-run of Battlestar Galactica.

"Oh, god, that show," Jocelyn said, topping up his glass with the bourbon. "You used to watch it all the time in college. I thought you'd rather be with that blonde woman with the stupid name than with me."

"She's a Cylon," Leonard said.

"You know that doesn't mean anything to me."

"A cyborg—a robot."

"You and your robots. You know, I couldn't stand it. All that time you spent hammering away at bits of metal when you should have been in the house helping. Welding and drilling and screwing—I almost wish it had been screwing _around_ instead. At least then I'd have known how to feel about it." She scoffed, curling her fingers around the neck of the wine bottle. "I didn't realise your little hobby meant that much to you."

"You wouldn't have married me if you knew, huh?" he asked. "I never complained about your hobbies."

"My hobbies didn't involve isolating myself from my spouse and my daughter."

"I know," he said quietly. "If I could change it—"

"You wouldn't change a thing," she said. Her eyes softened as she looked at him. "You wouldn't be the man I married if you'd change it."

They fucked right there on the couch, still mostly fully clothed. Leonard's jeans were pushed down just enough to free his cock and Jocelyn's skirt was pushed up to her waist, with her underwear tugged just enough to one side. He pulled at the buttons of her blouse until they came loose and he could run his fingers over the lacy fabric of her bra, leaning up to mouth at her nipple through it. With a gasp, she rocked her hips down, sliding onto his dick as if they'd never been apart. It was this way the last time he saw her, too. Awkward conversation, alcohol and comforting, familiar sex; a pattern they found all too easy to fall back into, even after the divorce.

She rode him slowly, dragging her fingers through his hair and up under the worn t-shirt he'd only put on because he knew it would annoy her. Her nails—perfectly manicured, as always—caught at his nipple and he made a faint noise that could almost be called a moan.

"Joss," he said, reaching for her hips. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, starting to thrust up into her carefully.

"Len," she replied on an exhalation, moving faster. She reached down between their bodies and touched herself deftly, her fingers circling her clit until she shuddered and her muscles tensed around him rhythmically. "Jesus, _Len_."

She looked exactly the same when she came as she always had done. It, and the six months of self-imposed celibacy, was enough to make Leonard come too, biting his lip so he wouldn't make any noise. They lay against each other until Jocelyn decided she was finished with the contact and pulled up and away from him. He couldn't remember the last time she'd been the one who wanted to cuddle afterwards.

Jocelyn tugged her clothes straight and stood up. "Excuse me; I need to use the bathroom."

"I'll call you a cab," Leonard replied. And then, when she came back, he said, "It's ten minutes away."

"Thank you."

They didn't talk after that, until they saw headlights through the window and the cab driver honked the horn. Jocelyn pulled her hair up into a loose ponytail. Leonard guided her to the front door, carrying her shoes, which he placed on the mat.

"So," she said, pushing her feet back into her shoes. "I'll pick up Joanna in the morning before you go to work. I want to take her shopping. We'll probably be out all day, but you've got my cell number if you need anything."

"That's fine. I think she'll like that."

"I'll see you tomorrow, then." She leaned in and kissed him softly, then let herself out of the house and half-ran down the path to the waiting car.

"Goddammit," he said, watching her cab drive away. He leaned his head against the doorframe and closed his eyes. "Goddammit, not again."

***

Jocelyn returned to Los Angeles not long after that. She and Leonard spent no more time together than they absolutely had to, keeping up appearances for Jo's sake. In the end, Jo took the entire thing far better than either of her parents. Leonard was amazed at how easily she could adapt to things.

He set a bowl of cereal down in front of her. "Ready for school, Jo?"

"Yes, but I don't want cornflakes. They're boring." She pouted and pushed the bowl away.

"Big girls eat their cornflakes. Big girls also brush their hair before they leave their rooms," he added, spotting a big tangle at the back of her head. "I thought you liked your hairbrush. Mommy got you a purple one, didn't she?"

She mumbled something, starting to spoon cornflakes into her mouth slowly.

"Okay, I'll brush your hair today, but you can't make a habit of this, Jo. I need you to be a big girl who can look after herself so I can get to work on time." Leonard didn't need breakfast that much anyway. He went into Jo's room to find where she'd left the hairbrush and tripped over a box of Lego, knocking the bricks out and onto the carpet, where he promptly trod on one with his bare foot.

Leonard could have used the two minutes he spent hopping around on one foot and trying not to swear too loudly for something better, but no matter. Trying to avoid the rest of the mess on the floor, he grabbed the brush from her nightstand and took it back out to the kitchen, where he worked the knot out of her hair—ignoring her protestations—and pulled it back into a ponytail.

"Okay, all finished," Leonard told her. "Brush your teeth as soon as you're done and we'll go. Janice is going to pick you up from school this afternoon and I'll be back from the hospital sometime this evening. Late afternoon, I hope."

"Can I have pizza for dinner?" Jo asked. She slid out of her chair and hugged him. "Pretty please?"

"Ask Janice. Bathroom, young lady." He made a mental note to leave Janice some extra money and a note with instructions to buy pizza, then poured himself a cup of coffee, draining it quickly and pouring a second. He'd slept badly the night before; the sort of insomnia that comes from anticipation,even though there was nothing to anticipate but another normal day.

He walked Jo to school and waited at the gates as long as he could before he had to run or risk being late to work again. The hospital administrators were always very understanding about the change in his circumstances, but Leonard suspected that their patience was going to run out sooner rather than later. He grabbed some toast and another coffee from the hospital cafeteria, then headed up to his office for his white coat and his messages.

It wasn't a big hospital. They had only a few departments; far too small a hospital to really need a doctor who specialised in medical robotics. Leonard didn't get to use his skills very often and he knew it was only because his father had been so respected by everyone on the hospital board that he was offered a job there as soon as he'd completed his internship. They respected him too, of course, but everyone knew that Leonard McCoy could be working at a big hospital in a big city and earning a hell of a lot more than St. Luke's could afford to pay him. He was a surgeon, but it wasn't in his job description here.

"Hey, Leonard," Barbara Flores said from the nurse's station as he walked past. "How's Jo?"

"Unwilling to brush her hair," he said. "Anything happen overnight?"

"Not much. You have a few potential patients; their charts are in your office. Doctor Korby isn't sure they need surgery, but he's left the decision up to you and gone home." She rolled her eyes.

Leonard rolled his eyes back at her. A mutual dislike of Roger Korby was what bonded most of the staff together. "Just what I'd expect from Roger. Thanks, Barbara. I'll be out for rounds in about twenty minutes. Half an hour at most."

The sense of nervous anticipation that had hovered around the edges of his thoughts since the previous night gradually dissipated over the rest of the day. There was too much work to be done to dwell on half-realised feelings. After a while, he didn't think about anything other than the pattern of his working days: ward rounds, patients, meetings, and back to the start. It wasn't a busy day, but it was enough to keep him occupied.

In some ways, the smaller hospital suited him more than a larger one ever could. He knew most of his patients by sight, if not name and family history. People trusted him to do the right thing by them, even if they didn't have the right kind of insurance. It was just how things worked at St. Luke's, and Leonard liked it that way.

He was treating a woman he went to elementary school with, Marcia Simmons, for a particularly nasty abscessing skin infection when there was a knock on the door.

"Doctor McCoy," Barbara said, poking her head inside the room. "I'm sorry to bother you, but can I have a word? Something's come up."

"Excuse me," Leonard said to Marcia and her partner. "I'll be back in a minute." He follows Barbara out of the room, rubbing his temples. "What is it? My shift's almost over. Can't you take this to whoever's on next?"

"Big crash on the highway," she said. "Nine car pile-up, they think, and we're the closest hospital. It's going to be a long night—if they're lucky. They're calling everyone in who can make it in the next fifteen minutes."

"Jesus." He dragged his fingers through his hair. "I need to call Janice, then I'll be right with you. Can you get someone to finish helping Ms Simmons?"

"I'll do it myself." Barbara grabbed his arm before he could dash off. "I think they want you in surgery tonight."

"Oh, _good_."

She flashed him a grin and disappeared back into the room. "I'm sorry, Doctor McCoy's been called away," she said, and then he headed for his office as quickly as he could.

Leonard called home first, drumming his fingers impatiently on his desk until Janice's face appeared on the screen. "Janice, hi. I need a big favour. Can you stay overnight tonight?"

"Emergency at the hospital?" she asked. He liked Janice. She was sensible and smart—she always picked up on things fast.

"Big traffic accident," he confirmed. "I don't know when I'll get home. I'll pay you extra, of course. The guest bedroom should be made up."

"You know there's no need for that, Leonard. Jo's a delight and I love spending time with her." Janice looks away from the screen for a moment. "She's just deciding what kind of toppings to get on her pizza. Do you want to talk to her?"

"I don't have the time, really," Leonard said, glancing at his watch. "Give her my love and tell her I'll see her before school tomorrow. And make sure she brushes her teeth. Don't let her bargain, whatever you do. Jocelyn taught her about haggling and she keeps trying to use it for things that can't be haggled. Like personal hygiene."

Janice laughed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Noted. We'll see you tomorrow, then. Good luck."

"Thanks, Janice, same to you. Goodbye."

"Bye!" she said cheerily, leaning in to disconnect the call.

He changed into a set of scrubs and headed for the OR. He figured that there was no point in waiting for the inevitable page when he could get there ahead of time and start preparing. The anaesthesiologist—a woman he recognised but had never spoken to and couldn't name—was already scrubbing in when he arrived.

"You're Leonard McCoy?" she asked. "I'm Anna Jason. I'd shake your hand, but..." She trailed off meaningfully, drying her hands and pulling on a set of nitrile gloves.

"Nice to meet you, Anna. Do you know what we've got coming in?"

"I think we're getting a ruptured spleen first of all, but they're still cutting people out of the cars, so it's definitely a case-by-case basis on this one."

"Spleens, my favourite," he said dryly, soaping up his hands and arms.

"For someone who's been out of surgery for as long as you have, I'd have thought you'd just be happy to be back," Anna said, putting on her sterile clothing. "It's just a shame I don't get to see you working with your robots. I heard you're a real whiz."

"That's what they tell me."

Then the first patient arrived, and there was no more time for idle chatter. Leonard knew he was only in surgery again because they needed everyone they could get with surgical experience, but he still planned to enjoy the time he had there—as much as one could enjoy cutting into people in an attempt to save their lives.

The first two operations of the night went well. The ruptured spleen was removed quickly and easily, with minimal risk of any further complications. The second patient was slightly trickier; a shard of metal had penetrated his lung and come to rest gently pressed against his pericardium, and his sats were dropping rapidly. There were a number of different little bleeds and each one had to be hunted down and repaired before they could even think about removing the metal, which set off even more bleeds. He eventually closed them off and carefully extracted the metal, depositing it in a kidney dish.

But it was the third patient that made Leonard's heart leap into his mouth. A little girl, Jo's age—maybe even in her class at school, because he thought she looked familiar—whose leg had nearly been severed clean through just below the left knee. She was very small and _very_ pale. Leonard hadn't thrown up since he left med school, but this was the closest he'd come since then.

"Are you okay?" Anna asked, noticing his reaction.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment. "I'm fine. She's just... my daughter's the same age."

"If you can't handle this, I can get one of the other surgeons to deal with it."

"I can handle it." Leonard was about to ask her to give him a minute, but then he realised that the little girl probably didn't have a minute. He turned to the nearest nurse, Kevin Riley. "I'm going to need support, though. I don't care who's free, just get me another surgeon in here as quickly as you can."

Kevin nodded and picked up the intercom phone, talking urgently into it. "Doctor Lough will be through in ten minutes," he said. "He says you should hang on for as long as you can, but do what you need to do if it comes down to it."

"Let's hope it doesn't," Leonard murmured. He began a closer examination of the patient. Several of the exposed blood vessels had been cauterised, either by the staff in the ER or by whatever had cut through the girl's leg. He didn't particularly want to seal off any more of them—he could still feel a faint pulse at the back of her ankle. "Well, I'll be damned. I can feel the posterior tibial pulse. I think we've got a chance here."

"Well, good," Anna said matter-of-factly. "Let's save her leg."

Leonard hadn't reattached an amputated body part without using one of his robots in a very long time, and even though he could remember what he had to do, it didn't come easily. He was more glad than he'd ever be willing to admit when Lough arrived and immediately took charge.

"It's salvageable?" he asked.

"Good colour, posterior tibial pulse," Leonard confirmed. "If we work fast enough, we might get it to take."

"It's not going to look pretty," Lough said, "but it's not going to look pretty without her foot, either. Somebody get me the neurolesce _now_ ; we need to knit the nerves if we want any chance of this working out. And cross-match six units of blood while you're at it."

It was a long operation. The patient almost bled out twice on the table. The second time, her blood pressure bottomed out completely and her heart stopped in spite of all the blood they were pumping into her. Leonard thought his was going to do the same. She was so tiny and so, so like his daughter. Just the thought of Jo lying on an operating table somewhere with strangers struggling to save her life made his chest tighten. But he couldn't dwell on it. He needed to give all of his attention to this little girl, for the sake of her and her family.

He lost track of the hours in the end. He didn't even realise how much his eyes were aching until they finally stitched up the skin of her leg, stepping back to let Kevin dress it.

"Get her into recovery and bring her out of it, Anna," Lough said. "We've done all we can." He peeled off his gloves, tossing them into the medical waste. "And as for you, Doctor McCoy, you did a fine job for someone who's been out of surgery for so long."

Leonard watched the table being wheeled out of the OR before he replied. "I couldn't have done it without you," he said. "Thank you, really. When they brought her in, I almost ran out of the room."

"I wouldn't have pegged you for a squeamish man."

"I'm not. But my daughter is the same age."

"Ah. So you're an imaginative man."

"Something like that." He passed his hand over his forehead, closing his eyes. "I don't suppose there's any chance she was the last patient from the accident?"

"The last patient for you, McCoy," Lough said. "I'm guessing you've been here for about sixteen or seventeen hours now. You were on shift when it was called in?"

"About to leave, but yes, still on shift," he said.

"Then you've earnt the right to go home, in my eyes. It's after two in the morning."

Leonard rubbed his forehead again. "Dammit."

"You might want to wash your face before you go home," Lough added. "You've got quite a lot of blood on there now."

"Perfect," he said, stripping off his gloves before he made it worse. "Thank you, I'll do that. And thank you again for saving my ass with that operation."

"You owe me one." They both laughed somewhat tiredly, then wished each other a good night.

Leonard washed off his face and changed back into his own clothes in his office. It felt like it'd been months since he'd first put them on that morning. There were no messages waiting on his phone, much to his relief, so he headed straight out. It was a twenty minute walk to the new house and he was already about to drop.

There was a nurse sitting at the station who he didn't know very well. He rarely took night shifts because of Jo, and so he wasn't as familiar with most of the night nurses as he was with Barbara and Kevin. He was so tired that he couldn't remember her name, even though he was sure he knew it, so he dropped his head down and sped up, hoping she wouldn't speak to him.

"Doctor McCoy?" she said. "The chief wants to see you tomorrow. He said you don't have to come in until twelve, but you're to go straight to his office when you get in."

"Okay, thank you. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Doctor."

It was a dark night and Leonard couldn't tell if the moon was up and obscured by the looming silhouette of the defunct nuclear plant just outside town or if there was no moon at all. The streets were completely empty. It was a small enough town that nothing much happened after midnight, and some nights the town was dead by ten in the evening. In the past, before Jo had been born, he and Jocelyn had walked around until the sun came up and never saw another soul. So he was a little surprised that—when he was about halfway home—he heard footsteps behind him. He wasn't overly concerned. There were plenty of rational explanations: it could be someone else walking home or an insomniac trying to wear him or herself out before going back to bed.

Leonard turned a corner and the footsteps followed him, so he risked a glance over his shoulder. The person was far enough back that he couldn't see a face, or even any definitive identifiers. It was probably a man, he thought. Wearing all black and coming after him with a steely kind of determination that he really didn't like.

"Doctor Leonard McCoy?" Definitely a man.

"I'm sorry, I'm off duty now. If you need medical attention, you should go to St. Luke's. There'll be someone there who can help you."

"You're Doctor Leonard McCoy?" the man said again. He was suddenly right next to Leonard, even though he could have sworn the man didn't run.

"Yes, but—look, I don't know what you want from me. I have a scalpel in my pocket, so don't even think about going for my wallet." He reached into his pocket, not that there was anything in there. Hopefully he could call the guy's bluff.

"Please, I don't want to hurt you," he said, holding his palms up. "I'm unarmed. I just want to talk to you."

He looked fairly harmless, but that didn't mean anything. He looked young, too; in his late teens at best, with the kind of stupid haircut that teenagers favoured. Not a man, but a boy. "What about? Who are you?"

"My name is Hikaru Sulu. I'm from a future."

Leonard thought he must have misheard. "Pardon? You're from the _future_?"

"From _a_ future," Hikaru said. "To be specific, I'm from one of your futures."

"That's just great. Did someone put you up to this? Was it Roger?"

A frown passed across his face. "Not at all. I don't know a Roger."

"Well, then, for future reference, if you're going to try and pull this Terminator shit, try to remember that time travelling destroys your clothes. You'd be far more realistic if you ditched that... whatever it is you're wearing." All-black motorbike leathers, from the looks of things. Not the kind of thing anyone around here wore, even if they did ride a motorbike.

"Oh," he said, his face lighting up. "Terminator, of course. You always did like those movies, even though you pretended not to."

"This isn't funny," Leonard said, starting to walk again. "I don't know who you are or what you're playing at, but if you're really from the future, you'll know what a crappy day I just had and to leave me alone."

"You're going to get fired tomorrow," he blurted out. "If you do, then you'll know I'm telling the truth, right?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever," he said. He was too tired to care. "I'm going home now. If you follow me, I'll call the police."

"I'll see you again soon."

"Sure," he muttered under his breath. "And maybe you'll have a better haircut by then, too." He sped up, but this time, the footsteps didn't follow him. When he glanced back over his shoulder, the street was empty again.

There was a light on in his house when he got home. He walked quickly up the path and let himself in, listening for the tell-tale sounds of Jo—who had been known to kick up a fuss when he was late home and refuse to sleep without seeing him—but there was nothing. Janice was still awake, watching the TV very quietly from the sofa, though she turned it off as soon as he came into the sitting room.

"Leonard, hey," she said, sitting up and stretching. "Do you want a drink? I can get you one .You must be exhausted."

He waved her off and sat down next to her. "You didn't have to wait up. Don't you have class tomorrow?"

"Not until the afternoon. How was work?"

"Long and stressful. How was Jo?"

"Good, actually. She was pretty much an angel. And don't worry, she hardly tried to bargain with me at all, even when I made her take a bath."

"You're a real lifesaver, Janice." Leonard tried to smile at her. "I don't know how I can possibly thank you enough for doing all this for us. I'm not sure what the going overtime rate is for babysitters."

"I think it's a large pepperoni pizza and plenty of quality time spent with a six-and-three-quarter year old," Janice said. "Coincidental, huh?"

"I don't think I agree, but we can sort it out tomorrow. I can't keep my eyes open any more and you should probably get to bed as well."

"Goodnight, then," she said, hopping up with far more energy than anyone should have at almost 3am. "Sleep well."

"I plan to. Goodnight," he said. Then he sat still for a moment, listening to her going up the stairs and mentally preparing himself to get up and do the same. It took him another couple of minutes, during which he seriously considered just sleeping on the couch, but in the end the idea of his extremely comfortable mattress won out and he persuaded himself to walk up to his bedroom. Leonard just about managed to strip down to his boxers before he fell into bed and drifted off to sleep almost immediately.

***

Leonard had strange, unpleasant dreams that night. He was at the hospital again, in the OR, but this time he was the only doctor in the room and he couldn't do everything he needed to do to save the little girl by himself. Then he was back in the courtroom, watching the judge give Jocelyn custody of Jo instead. Everything shifted, and he was trapped high in the air. Leonard hated heights and flying and anything that involved taking his feet off solid ground. He wanted to struggle, but the dream was so vivid that he was sure he'd actually fall. It was all pinned together by the uncomfortable feeling of being watched by someone with dark, inscrutable eyes. That boy with the haircut.

He woke up with a gasp, sunlight streaming into his bedroom. Thinking about that Hikaru Sulu kid. If he hadn't been so tired the night before, he'd have dragged him back to the hospital and had him admitted. There was clearly something wrong with him and Leonard had just left him on the street.

It was mid-morning. "Jo," he said suddenly. "Shit."

He scrambled out of bed and ran to Jo's room, which was empty—and mostly tidy, _and_ the bed was made for once. Confused, he went downstairs, where he found a note propped up on the kitchen table. It read:

"I've taken Jo to school. We thought you needed the sleep more than I did. J&J."

Janice, as always, was kicking his ass at the whole parenting thing. There was coffee in the pot that was still (just about) lukewarm so he gulped down a cup while he made himself some toast and eggs. It was the first proper meal he'd had in a while, he suddenly realised, so he got up and made a second helping as soon as he was done with the first, along with a fresh pot of coffee. Then he went upstairs and took a long, hot shower, taking the time to wash off the last traces of yesterday until his skin was pink from scrubbing and the heat.

When he was done, it was almost time for him to leave for his meeting with Gerard Hallstein, the chief of medicine. There was no sign of Hikaru Sulu the entire way there, not that he really expected to see him. After all, he had made his feelings pretty clear. The kid had probably wandered off somewhere to bother someone else.

The only thing that bugged Leonard was that he'd known his name, even though Leonard had no recollection of ever seeing him before in his life. Maybe he'd imagined the entire thing and that was why Hikaru had known who he was—because he was just part of Leonard's overtired brain, acting up after the stressful day he'd had.

He arrived at work just before midday and made his way up to Gerard's office. He was called in almost before he'd knocked on the door, which was unusual in itself. Nothing at this hospital tended to happen on time unless it was something no one wanted to happen.

"Thanks for coming in, Leonard," Gerard said, standing up to shake his hand. "Please, take a seat."

Feeling nonplussed, Leonard sat down in the chair in front of the desk and surreptitiously wiped his palm on his trousers. Gerard's hand was sweaty. "Why did you want to see me, sir?" he asked. "Did someone make a complaint about me?"

"No, not at all. Your work has always been exemplary. Leonard, you're aware of the state of the finances here, aren't you?" He steeples his fingers on the desk in front of him, continuing without waiting for a reply. "I'm afraid things have grown even more difficult for us of late, and we're reaching the point where it's no longer possible for us to staff St. Luke's in the same way."

 _This is not happening_ , Leonard thought. Aloud, he said, "Am I being fired?"

"Laid off, but yes. You'll get a modest severance package in the mail."

"I'm being fired right now?" he asked incredulously. "After everything I did last night?"

"We appreciate your help with treating the emergency patients, of course, but I'm afraid everything had already been decided long before yesterday. You're by no means the only person we have to let go; it's nothing personal at all."

"What about the patients? Who's going to treat them if you're firing us?"

"Anyone we can continue to treat here, we will, of course. Everyone else will be transferred to the nearest hospital to their home address." Gerard shrugged. "This is the only thing we can do, Leonard. It's this or closing the hospital entirely, and then everyone would be worse off."

"I have a daughter and a mortgage. What the hell am I supposed to do now?" Leonard said, his voice tight with anger.

"We'll provide you with an excellent reference, of course." He didn't exactly look sympathetic as he said it.

All of a sudden, Leonard wanted to jump over the desk and punch him right in the face. It was irrational, of course, but that didn't mean it wouldn't make him feel much, much better. "Thanks," he said instead, in the most sarcastic tone he could muster.

Gerard sighed. "I'm sorry. I know this is hard, but it's out of my hands."

"I'm sure it is." He got to his feet. "Is that everything?"

"It is, but—Leonard? We need you to clear out your office by the end of today."

Leonard didn't even dignify that with a response. He stormed down to his office, frowning so deeply that anyone who looked as if they might try and talk to him disappeared down side corridors as soon as they could. When he got there, he found some boxes stacked outside, ready and waiting for his belongings. He resisted the urge to put his foot through the bottom of each and every one of them.

He'd always thought that he didn't keep a lot in his office, but there was still enough there to fill three of the boxes—and each one was heavy enough that he could only really carry one of them at a time. He considered calling Janice and asking her if she could come to St. Luke's and pick him up in her car, but then decided that she'd either be napping or in class already and there was no point in disturbing her. It wasn't an emergency. Assuming she hadn't been fired as well, he still knew the main receptionist at the hospital, Lynn, and she'd almost certainly let him leave the boxes he couldn't carry behind the reception desk until he could come back for them, even if he had to do it in three trips by foot.

He was just bringing the third box over to the reception desk when he spotted a familiar-looking figure standing outside the main doors. "I'll be back for this in a second," he said to Lynn. "Thanks for the help."

"No problem," she replied, flicking through a stack of charts.

Hikaru had his back to the door, but he turned around when he heard Leonard coming out. "Doctor McCoy. Well? What happened?" he asked. He was still wearing the same clothes, but he'd actually got himself a haircut.

"Who the fuck _are_ you?" Leonard growled, grabbing him by the collar and pushing him against the wall. "Who the fuck are you that you know who I am, that you know things about my life that even I don't know?"

He tilted his head curiously, apparently entirely unfazed by Leonard's anger. "Did you get fired?"

"Did you break into the hospital files? Is that how you knew? Goddammit, what's the matter with you?" he asked.

"I'm sorry you got fired. But I did tell you last night that it was going to happen." Hikaru reached up and pried Leonard's fingers off his jacket with surprising ease. "I didn't mean to upset you. I only wanted to prove to you that I wasn't lying."

"You're stalking me. That's a pretty damn compelling reason for a man to be upset," he said through gritted teeth. "I mean, did you think it was going to go down well? You're lucky I haven't called the police. I should have called them last night."

"Please," Hikaru said. "I'm only here because of you. I want to help you."

He'd never know why he did it, but Leonard made a snap decision then. "Do you know where I live?" he asked.

"No," he said—too quickly.

"Hikaru."

"Yes, but I haven't been there. I didn't want to after the way you reacted last night. I thought—"

"That's enough. Can you help me carry those boxes by the desk back to my house?"

Hikaru peered through the plate glass and nodded. "Yes. I can carry all three of them."

"You need to stop lying if we're going to be acquaintances," Leonard said. Part of him wanted to laugh hysterically at what he was getting himself into, while the rest was just wondering if he needed to get his head checked as much as Hikaru clearly did. "You're still going with the time travel story, I guess?"

"It's not a story; it's the truth." He actually looked upset that Leonard didn't believe him.

"Whatever you say, kid. If you help me with the boxes, maybe I can help you. Come on." He motioned to Hikaru, who followed him obediently back inside the building.

Leonard picked up the first box, intending to turn around and hand it off to Hikaru, who looked as if he'd snap in half if he bent down and tried to pick one of them up. But when he looked back at him, Hikaru was holding the other two boxes as easily as if they were empty.

"I could take that one as well," he said. "I don't mind."

"Don't be ridiculous," Leonard said. "Wait for me outside, I need to say goodbye to some people."

"Okay." He wandered off towards the doors with the boxes.

"Who is that?" Lynn asked curiously, leaning over the desk and watching him go.

"Just this kid I know. Said he'd help me get my stuff home. Anyway, thanks for keeping an eye on the boxes while I was outside," he said. "I don't know if I'll be back in, so... this is goodbye, I reckon."

"Oh, I'm sure I'll see you around town," she said. She smiled faintly at him. "I'm sorry they did this to you, Leonard. You're a good man and I hope things work out for you and Jo."

"Thanks, Lynn. Goodbye and good luck with things around here."

He followed Hikaru out of the hospital and didn't look back.

"On the plus side," Hikaru said as they walked along the street, "you get to pick Jo up from school this afternoon."

Leonard adjusted the box in his arms until it was more comfortable. "Okay, we're going to have to lay some ground rules here. Rule one is you don't get to talk about my daughter. All the things you know about me, however you know them, I can cope with. But you do not talk about _her_. You got that?"

There was a long pause. "Okay. I can do that," he said. "Is there anything else?"

"You have to start telling me the truth. How you knew I was going to be fired today would be a start, because if you broke into the hospital, then I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

"I didn't break in anywhere," Hikaru said, looking horrified. "That's against the law."

A smile twitched at the corner of Leonard's mouth before he could stop it. "You don't want to break the law?" he asked, managing to compose himself.

"It's more like I can't break the law; it's hard-wired into me. If you told me to rob that bank over there, I'd want to do it, but I wouldn't be able to."

"Why would you want to rob a bank because I told you to?"

"That's hard-wired into me, too."

"That's hard-wired..." he repeated. "You're not making a lot of sense right now. Just tell me how you knew I'd get fired."

"Because I'm from your future, and you told me about losing your job at St. Luke's today."

"Okay. Let's say that I believe that you're really from the future." He didn't. "If that's the case, where's your time machine?"

Hikaru glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "I don't—it's inside me. Inside my brain, where it can't do any harm."

"Who would it harm, Hikaru?"

"The people in your time. In any time in the past, relative to where I'm from: here, twenty years from now, the nineteenth century. The technology hasn't been invented here yet and it could change history if someone here got their hands on an actual, physical time machine."

"But the thing is, without an 'actual, physical time machine', you don't really have any proof that you're from the future, do you?"

"I can't show you today," he said. "I do have proof, but it's not the right time."

Leonard sighed. "I'm just supposed to take your word for it, am I?"

"I know it sounds stupid." Hikaru stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at Leonard. "And I know you won't believe me, because that's not the kind of person you are. You don't believe anything without proof; if you can't see it or touch it. I remember that about you." To Leonard's horror, he almost sounded upset, and he was getting louder and louder. Passing people were beginning to look at them and Leonard remembered exactly what it was that he was dealing with: a scared kid with more issues than he was probably aware of.

"Okay, come on, let's keep walking and we'll go back to my place and talk there. Okay?"

"Okay," Hikaru agreed, slowly starting to move again.

They walked along in silence for quite some time. Leonard's arms were starting to ache from the box and he was sure that Hikaru's must be sore as well, considering how much extra weight he was carrying.

"Are you sure you're okay with those boxes?" he asked eventually. "Do you need a break?"

"No. We, uh... we're almost at your house, aren't we?"

"Kid," he said with a sigh. "Don't pretend that you don't know we are. It's insulting to my intelligence. You clearly know this stuff about me and I should be turning you in to the cops, but I'm not going to as long as you behave. You seem like a sensible person, apart from the stalking and the time travelling thing."

"That's a good point," Hikaru said, a little sheepishly. "I may have gone about this in the wrong way. I just—there's something I need to tell you, and I can't tell you why, but you need to listen to me. It's really important."

"Are you sure you don't want to wait until we get inside before you say it?"

"Have you heard of Doctor Christopher Pike?" he said.

Anyone who had even the smallest passing interest in robots of any variety had heard of Christopher Pike. He was considered the forefather of twenty-first century robotics; the advances he alone had made in the field were incredible and everyone who built robots wanted to work for Christopher Pike eventually. No one knew exactly what kind of research he had going on there, thanks to the confidentiality contracts everyone he employed had to sign, but everyone knew it was something pretty special and most people would probably kill to get a job at his company, Orion Automata, so they could find out. He wondered exactly what Hikaru was about to say.

"Go on," he said cautiously.

"He's going to call you in three days. Personally. He'll offer you a job at Orion Automata and you need to take it."

"Why would someone like Chris Pike offer someone like me a job?"

"Because your robots are the best. If you hadn't gone to medical school, he'd have offered you a job straight out of college and paid for your PhD."

Leonard let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Hell, you've got a vivid imagination." He thought of the robots sitting in his garage, where his car had been until he sold it to buy more parts. Jocelyn would be furious if she ever found out. "It's a hobby, nothing more."

"It'll be a lot more than a hobby if you take the job," Hikaru said. "And he will offer it to you. You just have to take it. You _need_ to take it."

"Say he does. Why wouldn't I take it? The man's a genius with a world-famous company and people would chop off limbs for the chance to work there." They turned the corner into Leonard's street.

"Because you'd have to move to New York and I know you don't want to shake up your life like that, because of J—because of the custody agreement. But it's really important that you take that job."

"You're damn right I don't want to move," he said. "We've only just moved into this house and we're happy here. Even if Chris Pike phoned me up and promised me a million dollars a year, I wouldn't take it."

"At least consider it," he said. "Please, don't just make a snap decision. Please, Leonard."

He pursed his lips and stepped onto the path leading up to his house. "If I actually get a phone call from Chris Pike, then yes. I'll consider any offers he may or may not make to me. Are you coming in?"

The boxes were already on the path next to Hikaru's legs. "No, thank you. Just remember: three days from now. He'll call."

"If you say so." Leonard put his box down and unlocked the door, then turned back to him. "Hey—" he began, then stopped abruptly. Hikaru had completely disappeared—just as he'd done the night before—leaving no trace that he'd ever been there apart from the two boxes, still sat at the foot of the path. "Dammit, that's just weird."

He took all three boxes inside, leaving them by the door for the time being, then went back out to the garage. The half-finished metal frames stared accusingly at him from where they'd been scattered, across his workbench and the floor. There were a number of boxes stacked against the back wall and he dug through them, looking for one particular robot that he'd worked on for years when he was in college, struggling to perfect. In the end, he'd given up on it when he started medical school. The framework was flawless but he could never quite get the programming right, and he no longer had the time to struggle with it.

It turned up eventually in a battered cardboard box that he was certain he hadn't looked inside since he packed it after college: a metal skeleton in beautiful proportion, despite only being seventy centimetres tall, with electromuscles hooked and twisted and bound by hand to the bones. An android frame, designed to replicate human movement so perfectly that it was indistinguishable from the real thing. And it had worked. It was the best thing he'd ever built with his own two hands but the faulty programming meant that he'd never really wanted to show it to anyone.

Medicine wasn't so different from robotics and he'd thrown himself into it, just as his parents and Jocelyn expected him to, but deep down, Leonard knew that—if he'd been able to choose, free from their expectations—the robots would have won out.

***

Leonard didn't start looking for a new job straight away—not particularly because he expected that he was going to get a call from Christopher Pike. It was nice to just get to spend time with his daughter without having to rely on Janice to pick up his slack. Even after just a few days, he could already tell that Jo was enjoying herself a lot more. He didn't tell her that he'd been fired, just in case she repeated it to Jocelyn over the phone. He knew he'd have to tell his ex-wife sooner or later, but he wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet for as long as he could before then.

In spite of himself, he'd been thinking about Orion Automata more and more, so he was spending most of his days while Jo was at school in the garage, designing and building new robots. He hadn't touched the android since digging it out of storage, but it was sitting on the edge of his workbench now instead of being buried under broken parts. Oddly, he felt better when he could see it. It felt right, somehow.

He woke up on the third day after his firing to discover that it was raining torrentially and Jo's school was closed due to flooding—much to her delight. Her enthusiasm was dampened somewhat when she realised that she wouldn't be able to go and play in the yard because of the weather, but she was still excited enough to refuse breakfast, opting instead to run around the house at top speed. By the time Leonard eventually corralled her, his breakfast was cold and hers was so soggy as to be completely inedible.

"Would you look at that?" he said, pretending to be exasperated. "What are we going to eat for breakfast now, Jo?"

"Peanut butter," Jo said. She offered him the jar.

He kneeled down in front of her, putting on a stern face. "That's not a very healthy breakfast, is it? We need something else to make it balanced."

"Jelly?"

"That's right. Peanut butter and jelly is the only balanced breakfast." Leonard swept her up in his arms and swung her around the room until she squealed with laughter. "And you know what you have to promise?"

"I won't tell Mommy!" she said, still laughing.

"You're a good girl. Let's fix you a sandwich."

Leonard left her in front of the TV to eat her sandwich while he took a shower, figuring that he couldn't be a worse parent at that point anyway. When he came back downstairs, he could hear her chattering away in the sitting room. He thought he could hear another voice as well, but the TV was muted and Jo wasn't even looking at it anyway.

"Who are you talking to, darlin'?" he asked.

Jo looked up at him from the phone and smiled broadly. "Mister Pike," she said. "Daddy, he makes robots just like you."

"Why don't you go upstairs and play in your room for a little while? I'm going to talk to Mister Pike." He took the phone away from her, nudging her in the direction of the stairs before closing the sitting room door and looking into the phone's screen. "Uh, I'm Leonard McCoy. I'm sorry about my daughter. She doesn't always listen when I tell her not to answer the phone."

"That's quite all right, Doctor McCoy," he said. "As it happens, I very much enjoyed talking to Joanna. She's a very smart little girl. I'm Chris Pike, by the way."

"I know who you are—I mean, who doesn't know who you are? You can call me Leonard, by the way." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I didn't actually believe you'd call."

Chris raised his eyebrows. "Somebody told you I would?"

"Sort of. It's a long, unbelievable story."

"It seems like your life's been fairly interesting lately, Leonard. I heard you were just laid off from the hospital where you were working. Have you found another job yet?"

"I hadn't really started looking," he said. "You must have very good contacts; it's only been a few days."

"Let's just say I keep an eye on the people who interest me. And you interest me. Eight years ago, you were one of the most promising roboticists in the world, but you chose medicine instead. It looks like it isn't working out for you, so I have a proposition for you. If you come and give robotics another chance with me at Orion Automata, you can work on any of your personal projects with the full support of the company behind you, as long as you also work on what you're assigned."

Leonard exhaled. "What's the catch?"

"You'll need to move to New York. We'll provide you with a house and we have an excellent school affiliated with the company. I think Joanna would thrive there," Chris said. He laughed faintly. "You don't have to give me an answer right away, of course, but I suspect you're going to be chased down by the other robotics companies as soon as they hear you're unemployed. I wanted to be the first to extend an offer to you. Together, I believe we could do great things."

"It's not that I'm not grateful for the offer," he said. "I'm sure you know I got a divorce recently, if you know I was fired. I only got custody of Jo because my life was more stable than my ex-wife's. If we just upped and left for New York, she'd kick up one hell of a fuss."

"Is that an outright no? Like I said, you can take as long as you like to think about it. This isn't a position that needs to be filled, this is us wanting you to come and work at Orion Automata."

"I'm sorry to have wasted your time, Doctor Pike. I won't waste it any more by thinking on an offer I shouldn't take."

"If I can call you Leonard, you can call me Chris," he said. "It hasn't been a waste. The offer I made you will stand for as long as I own the company. You just say the word and there's a place for you here. Just take the weekend to think about it. But if you say no on Monday, just remember that you can always change your mind."

They exchanged goodbyes and hung up, and Leonard let out a long sigh, running his fingers through his hair again. He had no idea what he was supposed to think anymore. Hikaru had been right about two things—more, if Leonard counted each detail he'd got right about Chris Pike's phone call. He hesitated to say that his time travel story was the reason why, but if Hikaru was some kind of spy, he was useless at being inconspicuous.

Even more useless than Leonard had thought, he realised about thirty seconds later. He'd glanced out of the window to see if the weather was easing up any, only to see Hikaru standing on the path, staring up at the house. He didn't have an umbrella and he was still wearing the same clothes he'd worn the other times they'd met.

Leonard was pretty sure his eyes rolled all of their own accord. He went to the front door, yanked it open and yelled, "Hey! Get inside, you idiot, you'll catch your death!"

"I can't catch my death!" Hikaru called back, but he came up the path anyway. His hair was plastered to his scalp and he was shivering faintly. It didn't look like his clothes were particularly waterproof.

"How long were you out there?" he asked.

"About, uh, an hour. Maybe longer, things are a little... rusted up in my head." He half-heartedly brushed at the rain on his jacket and peered past Leonard into the house. "I never saw inside here before."

"That's oddly reassuring," he said, stepping back to let Hikaru into the house. "Up the stairs, blue door on the right."

"I don't really understand." There was water running down his face and dripping onto the carpet.

"That's the bathroom. You need a shower. There are towels already in there, but don't use the purple ones, because they belong to Jo. Any of the others are fine. I'll find you something else to change into."

"But—"

"Just go, Hikaru. I need to talk to you, but I'm not going to do it while you're ruining my house and making yourself sick at the same time."

"I'm not going to get sick," he said, but he went up the stairs anyway. About a minute later, Leonard heard the water start running. He rolled his eyes again and went upstairs himself. Jo was playing peacefully in her room, so he left her there and went to try and find something that he thought might fit Hikaru, who was a good few inches shorter than he was. In the end he settled on jogging pants and an old sweater he hadn't worn in years. They wouldn't fit perfectly, but he'd just have to deal with it for the time being.

When the sound of the shower stopped, Leonard knocked on the door and opened it just enough to pass the clothes through. "There you go." He waited for Hikaru to take the clothes and then shut the door again. "I'll be in the kitchen when you're dressed. Just come right down."

"Thank you," came the muffled reply.

He went back down to the kitchen and made a fresh pot of coffee, pouring himself a cup and sitting at the table to wait for Hikaru. For some reason, he just trusted the kid, even if he had only acted in a strange way since the first time they'd met. Everything he said was crazy, but he said it with such honesty that Leonard was starting to want to believe him. It was a good thing that he wasn't a psychiatrist, he thought. He couldn't just believe Hikaru's insane stories because he seemed like he was being honest.

He was still deep in thought when Hikaru came into the kitchen, clearing his throat quietly. The clothes were far too big on him, but he'd rolled up the sleeves and the cuffs of the pants.

"Thank you for these," he said again, pulling at the front of the sweater. "My clothes are going to take a while to dry."

"What's with the leather, anyway? Is that the style in the future?"

"No, I just like leather." He actually seemed serious.

Leonard ran his fingers over the handle of his coffee cup and cleared his throat. "Why are you here, Hikaru? Why do you keep appearing out of nowhere and telling me these damn crazy tales? Because I'm starting to think that maybe I'm the crazy one."

"You're not crazy," Hikaru said. "I'm sorry that I've done this to you, but... I came back because I wanted to help you. The next few years are crucial and I can help."

"I thought you weren't supposed to change things when you time travelled."

"My presence alone has already changed things." He exhaled. "It's more like alternate realities. Multiple universes. I don't travel through time so much as cross dimensions. The timeline I come from is from the same root timeline as yours, but I've changed it by coming back here. If I help you make a different decision, the lines diverge even further. I can still go back to my future and nothing I've done here will have affected it."

"You told me before that someone else getting a hold of your time travel technology would damage things in the past. Change things."

"Uh. Well." He coughed. "That might not have been strictly the truth. There's something about me that you don't know yet, and I didn't want to just tell you like it was nothing. You had a hard enough time believing the time travelling part."

"It seems to me like there's a lot of things I don't know about you," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"This one's kind of big. Do you have an ophthalmoscope?"

"Why? Are you having vision problems?" Leonard asked, slightly sarcastically. It was probably uncalled for, but Hikaru was starting to get on his nerves—sitting at his kitchen table and saying all these completely insane things as if they were perfectly normal. Of course, if he was telling the truth, they were. But he couldn't possibly be telling the truth.

"You want proof," he said calmly. "I'm going to show you some, but you _will_ need your ophthalmoscope. That's the only way I can show you the more compelling evidence. Unless you have a portable x-ray machine lying around."

Apparently Leonard's sarcasm didn't go unnoticed.

"Fine," he said. "I'll go get it. I need to check on Jo as well, but I shouldn't be long. Help yourself to coffee while I'm gone if you want it."

He held his ear to Jo's bedroom door and was reassured by the sound of her talking to herself—and it was definitely to herself this time. There was no point in opening the door and disturbing her, so he left her to her game and went into his bedroom to look through the boxes of things he'd brought home from the hospital after he was fired, knowing that there was definitely an ophthalmoscope in one of them. He probably needed to look through everything in the boxes properly, but as soon as he found the ophthalmoscope, he just left the rest as it was. Most of it was completely useless to him now.

"I have a question. Why come back to help _me_?" Leonard asked as he re-entered into the kitchen. "Am I supposed to do something important and you need to make sure I do it? Or am I going to do something bad and you need to make sure I won't do it?"

"Just check my eyes, please. Either one is fine."

He let out a heavy sigh. "All right. Stand up so we can get this over with."

When he stood up, Leonard turned on the light and pulled down his right eyelid, leaning in to peer through the ophthalmoscope at Hikaru's retina. But he didn't see a normal retina. He didn't even see a diseased or damaged retina; there wasn't anything near natural in what he saw and it took a moment for him to process what was happening.

The tiny gears behind Hikaru's eye spun, turning themselves in an endless loop.

"What the f—god _dammit_ , what the fuck are you?" he demanded, nearly dropping the ophthalmoscope.

"In the past of my timeline, you took the job at Orion Automata," Hikaru said, sitting down calmly. "It took you several years after it was first offered to you, though. You worked on medical nanotechnology with a programmer called James Kirk for seven years. It was your decision. Your project. When you completed that project, Doctor Pike introduced you to a geneticist called Christine Chapel, and the three of you began working on something called CGP—the Cybernetic Genome Project."

Leonard groped for the back of his chair and eased himself into it. "You're a robot."

"I'm a cyborg," he corrected. "Human, just hung on a platinide frame instead of a calcium one."

"I made you. In the future."

"All three of you made me. Although it was five, actually, by the time you got to me. After the first two cyborg models were produced, two European scientists joined the team. They're the ones who were working on the time travel capabilities." He looked embarrassed suddenly. "We're not strictly meant to use them unless it's an emergency. Most people don't even know we have them."

"The first two...?" Leonard repeated. "How many are there?"

"Six models," he said. Then he pursed his lips faintly. "No more."

He put his face into his hands and groaned faintly. "You'll forgive me for finding this all a little hard to process," he said, muffled by his palms. There was a very light touch on his arm, making him look up.

"You programmed me to forgive you," Hikaru said gently. He pushed up the sleeve of the borrowed sweater and extended his arm towards Leonard.

There was a string of numbers and letters tattooed there—4HS-00x-LM—and Leonard didn't understand any but his initials. "I don't know what those mean."

"Fourth model, Hikaru Sulu," he said, rolling the sleeve back down again. "No production line, no production number. Property of Leonard McCoy."

"You were mine? I don't—not _mine_ , dammit. You can't own a human being."

"You own me. Another you owned me. Cyborgs don't have the same rights as humans; the future isn't a utopia. We're bound by law to never try to hide what we are. We have to be identifiable."

"The gears, in your eyes—"

"Useless," he said, "except as a quick way of spotting a cyborg. Genetically, each model is identical, but we can cut our hair or dye it; wear coloured contact lenses or get cosmetic surgery. But the only way to remove the gears would permanently blind us."

"That's horrific," Leonard said.

"That's how you designed us. It wasn't your idea, so we don't hold it against you. You only did what the government required of you as soon as you, James and Christine built a genome from scratch and people found out why."

"So, what, you're back here to stop me from building you in the first place?"

"Nothing like that," Hikaru said. "I don't think I should tell you why I'm here in detail; it might change something that I didn't mean to change. I just came to tell you that you need to take the job. Move to New York with your daughter." He smiled faintly. "He called, didn't he? Before you let me in."

"I'm sure you know he did." He sighed and rubbed his temples. "Look, don't take this the wrong way, but... do you have anywhere you can go? It's just a lot to take in. You're a time travelling cyborg from the future. I don't really have a lot of experience with that at this stage in my life, even if I apparently do in god only knows how many years' time."

"I—uh, okay. What about your clothes?"

"Bring them back when yours are dry. In a couple of days."

"Thank you," Hikaru said, smiling more widely. "I'll collect my clothes and boots from upstairs."

He loaned Hikaru an umbrella as well, though apparently they weren't around in the future because Hikaru looked at it like Leonard had just handed him an alligator.

"Doesn't it rain in the future?" he asked.

"Of course, but we don't have these any more. It looks archaic and impractical. How do I—?"

"Unbelievable." Leonard shooed him out onto the porch and opened the umbrella for him. "Now get going before I change my mind about wanting my stuff back. I mean it. No more hanging around outside the house for at least two days. I don't even want to suspect you've been here."

He curled his fingers around the handle of the umbrella and nodded. "Goodbye, Leonard." And without even waiting for a response, he set out down the path and away along the street. Leonard watched him for a while, then sighed and closed the door. His life had been so normal a week ago, and now he had no idea what to make of it.

At least he still had Jo, who was still deeply normal for a small child and engrossed in having a tea party with her toys. "Hey, darlin'," he said. He leaned against the doorframe. "How are you doing?"

"You know, Daddy," she said, looking up with a pout. "It's been the _oddest_ morning."

 _You're telling me, Jo_ , he thought, and sat down to partake in the tea party.

***

Hikaru was as good as his word; Leonard didn't see him for days after their conversation. It was for the best, he was sure. If Hikaru was telling the truth—and if he wasn't, it was an incredibly elaborate lie—taking the job Chris Pike had offered him was potentially going to be the biggest decision he'd ever made in his life. It was bigger than going to med school, proposing to Jocelyn and deciding to have Jo put together. It would change the entire face of modern robotics in just a few years. Not that Hikaru had mentioned how long it had taken him, Leonard realised. Probably years, if they had to create their own genome as well as perfect the frame to carry the organic components.

Then there was the medical nanotechnology that Hikaru had mentioned. It wasn't that he had no interest in the subject—on the contrary, it was the ideal next step in his combination of medical science and robotics—but Leonard couldn't work out what would prompt him to take a job at Orion Automata only to work for seven years on something that wasn't one of the company's projects.

Frankly, the entire thing made his head hurt just thinking about it.

He thought about the job offer all weekend, sat in the garage and stared at his half-built robots while Janice and Jo played in the house. In the end, everything came down to Jo. His dream job couldn't be his dream job if it could result in Jocelyn taking Jo away from him. Even if Jocelyn didn't have a problem with him taking their daughter to a different state, Jo was settled here. She liked her school and she had plenty of friends. She was doing well, and Leonard didn't think he'd be able to forgive himself for uprooting her just so he could take a job. There were plenty of jobs in town that he could apply for. None would pay as well as the hospital had, but the hours would be more accommodating as well.

Trying to remember the last time he'd worked a nine-to-five, Leonard phoned Chris Pike just before he knew the offices at Orion Automata would close for the day and turned down his offer. Even knowing that he could call back any time he liked and change his mind didn't make it any easier. Strangely, all he could think about was Hikaru and the look that'd be on his face when he found out what Leonard had done. Hikaru, who—if Leonard could believe his own eyes—was a robot.

"Hikaru is not who you should be thinking about now," he told himself sternly. Then he went into the house to check that Janice was going to be all right looking after Jo for the evening and changed out of his grubby old jeans, grabbing his jacket. He wanted a drink, and he wanted to do it alone.

The clothes and the umbrella he'd loaned Hikaru were sitting on the porch. There was no note—not that he was expecting a note, of course—or any other sign that his things hadn't just spontaneously appeared there. They couldn't have been there when Janice had arrived at around three; she'd have brought them into the house with her. Hikaru must have dropped them off sometime between then and now and then done his magical disappearing trick. Which, come to think of it, was probably teleporting or something equally implausible.

He walked across town to his favourite bar and wondered if Hikaru had gone because he knew that Leonard hadn't taken the job. If he couldn't change the past, Leonard couldn't see why he'd have bothered to stick around any longer than he had to. It seemed impossible that taking a job a few years earlier than he would have done if left to his own devices could have such an effect that someone would come back in time to ensure it happened—not that it had worked.

Thankfully, the bar was relatively close, because Leonard definitely needed that drink. He wasn't any kind of physicist normally and alcohol made a lot of things make sense that shouldn't, he'd always found. He took off his jacket, sat at the barstool that had become his customary place at the bar during his divorce and ordered a bourbon to get himself started.

"It's a bit early for that, don't you think?"

"I wondered when you were going to show your face," Leonard said, looking out of the corner of his eye at Hikaru. "I've got a doorbell, you know. I was kind of expecting you to ring it when you brought the clothes back."

Hikaru shrugged and sat down next to him. "I didn't want to bother you."

"So instead, you followed me to a bar. I wish you'd just be straight with me, kid. You're not exactly making a lot of sense right now, and that's even if I believe your robot story."

"But you do believe it," he said, resting his elbows on the bar. He had dark bags under his eyes and he looked exhausted.

"Maybe I do. But I want to know more about you and the other robots I—we—build. _When_ , for a start. It all sounds pretty complex to me, so I'm guessing the version of me that you know must be getting on in years. I mean, creating a genome. You've got to be from at least fifty years in the future." He sipped at his drink.

"The medical nanorobots you designed could cure almost everything. Broken bones, cancer, organ regrowth... even old age, to an extent." Hikaru paused to let it sink in. "You tested them on yourself first, and they worked. By the time you started working on the first cyborg, everyone on your team was using them. Nearly everyone in the world was."

He downed the rest of his bourbon and gestured to the bartender. "So they don't consider you a person, but they're technically cyborgs themselves."

Hikaru bared his teeth in a sort of half-grin. "Even a century and a half into the future, most humans are irrational hypocrites."

"A century and a half?!" Leonard definitely needed that refill.

"You barely looked ten years older than you do now."

"How old are _you_?" he asked.

"I was activated almost twenty-six years ago, in my timeline." Anticipating Leonard's next question, he said, "I don't age. The nanorobots are a part of us, too. I've looked like this since the day I was activated and I'll stay like this until I'm deactivated."

"And when does that happen?"

Hikaru looked away from him. "Theoretically, that's up to my owner. Hey, can I get a beer?" he called to the bartender.

Clearly, it was something he didn't want to talk about, so Leonard switched topics. "You said there were six models. What are they like?"

"Well," Hikaru said after he'd taken a long gulp of his beer. "I'm the fourth model that went on to be mass-produced—but I was built before that, kind of a prototype—and the second male. The XX chromosome allows more room to manoeuvre in the genome, so four out of the six are female. Only three of them are mass-produced, though—Two, Three and Five. There was only one copy of the first model, Zero, and she was deactivated early on. Before mass production of any of us began."

"And you're Four." He gestured at Hikaru's arm. "And you're all called Hikaru Sulu?"

He nodded. "Each model shares a name. It was your idea. It makes it easier for humans to see us as people, even though we don't get the same rights. People aren't afraid of us."

"What are the others' names?"

"One is Spock—James picked that. Two is Gaila, Three is Nyota Uhura and Five is Hikari Sulu."

"That sound awful familiar," he said. He motioned to the bartender again to top him up. The bourbon was disappearing more quickly than he'd anticipated it would.

"She's me, nearly. XX chromosomes and a slightly different personality. She's the closest thing to an identical twin sister I can have, not that we really consider ourselves siblings. More like two versions of the same person." He wrapped his fingers around the bottle, and Leonard marvelled at the movement. Even the most advanced robots he'd seen still couldn't do that so perfectly. There was always something, some hint of the uncanny valley rearing its head.

"What's the difference?"

"She loves everyone. I'm a little more particular," Hikaru said cryptically.

"If I was your owner in the future and you came back to help me with something, was that because you love me?" Leonard asked. It came out a little sharp—more sarcastic than he'd intended.

Hikaru took another swig from the bottle and then pressed his lips into two thin lines, not looking at Leonard.

"Oh, goddammit," he said. "I was _joking_ , I didn't think—are you serious? You're a robot, cyborg, whatever. Now you're saying you're in love with me? Is that even possible?"

"We have feelings," he said. "We have organic brains, we have hormones, we feel every emotion you feel. You made sure of that."

"The Leonard you knew isn't me, Hikaru. I'd never even met you before last week and now you're everywhere in my life. Does he love you too? Because you should go back to him. You've been here since... god, I don't even know when you arrived. Surely someone's missing you by now. Surely future me's missing you."

"You died," Hikaru said. "I came back because you died."

"Oh."

That killed the conversation pretty quickly. They both drank in silence for nearly an hour, occasionally glancing at each other when they thought the other wasn't watching. Leonard didn't normally feel this awkward with anyone but Jocelyn.

"How did I die?" he asked eventually, after enough alcohol to make it seem like a good idea. "Something the nanorobots couldn't cure?"

"No. They don't stave off death indefinitely and the human body rejects new nanorobots, even if they're apparently identical. You deactivated them before they could deactivate themselves."

Leonard cursed under his breath. "I killed myself. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"

"You had a lot of regrets and they weighed on you," he said, so quietly that Leonard could hardly hear him over the music and the chatter of other people in the bar. "Even more heavily in the end."

"Another round?"

"That'd be good, thanks."

After the bartender had brought their new drinks and left again, he looked across at Hikaru. "I didn't realise you'd drink alcohol. I suppose it makes sense if you have all the usual receptors in your brain, but I just didn't expect it."

"The nanorobots help me to metabolise it more quickly, but I still get a buzz. No hangovers, though."

"Well, here's to my future finest invention," Leonard said, holding up his glass. "Anti-hangover nanorobots."

"Cheers," he replied, clinking his bottle against the glass.

The alcohol was definitely helping the situation to be less bizarre, Leonard decided. Or, at least, it was helping him to cope with the fact that he was drinking in a bar with a cyborg that a future version of himself would build in fifteen decades' time.

"My life," he said three drinks later, "is insane. This doesn't happen to other people. Other people don't get fired and then a robot comes and says, 'Hey, you're going to get a job offer from your hero. Also, _I'm a robot and I'm in love with you_.'" He ended up shaking his fist at Hikaru for emphasis.

"I didn't—I didn't say it like that," Hikaru protested. "I didn't do—" and he shook his fist back "—there wasn't any of that."

"No, true," he said, conceding the point. "But you have to admit, none of this is normal. I mean, you're a robot. I make you."

"So do James and Christine and Pavel and Scotty," he said. "I'm just your cyborg; that's the only reason I came back to you. I wanted to help."

"Who are Pav—oh, the time travel men? You never told me their names before."

"You won't meet them for years. I thought it didn't matter. You didn't take the job, so I don't know when you'll meet them." He almost sounded angry. No, not angry—petulant. Maybe alcohol affected him more than he realised.

"When do I take the job where you're from?"

"Too late," Hikaru said ominously. It didn't seem that ominous to Leonard, though, not after all the bourbon, and he muffled his laughter in the latest glass.

"Is that a joke?" he asked. "You sound like you're in a movie about an apocalypse that only you can prevent."

He rolled his eyes at Leonard and didn't answer.

"So," he said after a while. "Where are you staying? Do you have any money? Wait—is money around in the future?"

"Not bills and coins. Something like credit cards, but it doesn't work in quite the same way. And I don't need to sleep as much as humans do, so I was just sleeping on a park bench when I needed to. If it's just an hour or two at a time, no one cares."

"You're sleeping rough?" he asked, appalled. _There's a shelter in town, I can give you the address_ , he meant to say. But what came out was, "I have a guest bedroom."

Hikaru looked at him in surprise. "You want me to stay with you?"

"Unless you're going back to the future any time soon. You can't just sleep on benches. I bet you're not eating properly, either." He held up a finger. "And don't tell me you don't need to eat; if you're organic, you've got to be getting energy from something other than just a fuel cell."

"I'm going to go back. Definitely," he said. "I just... I might hang around for a bit. Keep an eye on things, in case you change your mind about the job."

"Better safe than sorry," Leonard agreed, though he wasn't quite sure why.

They had one last drink each. Leonard paid for them all, because Hikaru didn't have any money—of course. Then they made their way through the bar, which was packed with people now—very different to how it had been when they arrived—and back towards Leonard's house. Leonard had drunk too much and he knew it. He was managing to walk in mostly a straight line, though he'd occasionally veer slightly and his arm would bump against Hikaru's shoulder. Hikaru walked with his arms crossed over his chest, clutching at his sides as if he was trying to control himself.

The streets weren't as empty as they had been the first night they met, but things got quieter the closer they got to home. By the time they were a few blocks away, Leonard was only seeing other people occasionally. He was too busy thinking about how often Hikaru managed to get him alone to notice the loose slab on the sidewalk. His toe caught on the edge of it and his inner ear, impaired as it was by the bourbon, couldn't do anything to help.

 _That's a broken nose_ , he thought, his arms not responding to his attempt to lift them and protect his face, before he realised that he wasn't falling any more.

Hikaru was in front of him and somehow holding him up, even though Leonard was sure he must weigh a lot more than Hikaru did. His face was very close—centimetres away, if that. Leonard could smell the beer on his breath and, much to his surprise, he didn't think it was unpleasant.

It had been a very long time since he was this close to someone who wasn't Jocelyn and didn't come with those memories of unsatisfactory, bitter sex, and he could feel himself starting to react to it, in spite of the amount of alcohol inside him. If Hikaru was in love with him—a future him, a him that he would never be—then this would never end well.

"This is not," he started, then stopped again.

"No," Hikaru agreed. And then he closed the distance between them and very gently pressed their lips together.

The first thing that struck Leonard was how soft his mouth was. He didn't think he'd been expecting a hard, metallic mouth, because kissing Hikaru hadn't really occurred to him before it happened, but he felt so human—not at all like he was partly a machine. If he didn't know better, he wouldn't be able to tell. The thought wouldn't even cross his mind.

Hikaru was an eager kisser, just... clumsy. He knew how to kiss Leonard but it was unpolished, like he hadn't done it in a while—like he was out of practice. _How long have I—has_ he _—been dead for him?_ He pushed the thought aside, then curled his fingers over Hikaru's shoulders and tried to push him aside, too. This would be a mistake for them both.

"I'm sorry," Hikaru said immediately, looking away. "That was the wrong thing to do."

"We both had too much to drink and we need to sleep this off," he said. He licked his lips subconsciously. "If that's how you work."

"Pretty much," he said faintly.

Janice was still up when they got back, of course, and she shot Leonard a quizzical look when she saw Hikaru. He made a shushing motion, gave him the clothes that had been returned earlier in the day and pointed him in the direction of the guest bedroom. As soon as he was upstairs, Leonard went into the sitting room to speak to Janice.

"Who's _that_?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"A friend of mine. He's... in town for a while and he needed somewhere to stay. So I have the spare bedroom and I offered it," he replied, somewhat lamely.

A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth, but to her credit, she didn't say anything. "Okay. Jo ate all of her dinner, even though there were potatoes, and she went out like a light. I think because we played down at the creek for a couple of hours. Do you want me to come over tomorrow?"

"I think we'll be all right. Thanks, Janice." He handed her a few bills from his wallet and walked her out to her car. She waved at him as she drove off.

When he looked back up at the house, Hikaru was watching him from the window of the guest bedroom.

***

The sound of music drifting up from downstairs woke Leonard up the next morning at a little past six. _Loud_ music. Jo was old enough to know better; she'd been told time and time again that she wasn't allowed to do anything loud enough to wake other people up. His mouth felt like it was full of sawdust, and his head wasn't feeling much better. He dragged himself out of bed and pulled on his robe, stopping in the bathroom to splash water on his face and take a few painkillers before he went down to see what was going on.

As he got closer, he could make out the music better—definitely something by Lady Gaga, who'd been Jo's favourite artist since she was two—as well as talking and laughing.

"You need to—"

"Like this?"

"Yes!" More laughter.

Leonard stuck his head around the kitchen door and stared. Jo was teaching Hikaru the dance moves to her favourite song and Hikaru obviously hadn't been lying about the nanorobots preventing hangovers, because he was dancing as enthusiastically as Jo. Clearly, he had a better sense of rhythm than Leonard ever had; he'd taken to it like a duck to water.

"You two making friends?" he asked, groping his way across the room with his eyes half-closed against the light. He turned down the music.

"Yes," Hikaru and Jo said in unison. Then Jo said, "Aw, Daddy!"

"Daddy has a headache today, Jo. And you know the rules about noise in the morning."

"I'm sorry, I should have asked her to turn it down," Hikaru said. "I just had never heard a song by... Lady Gaga?" He looked at Jo for reassurance, and she nodded. "By Lady Gaga before."

"That's the best news I've heard all day. I've been hearing them for as long as I can remember." Someone—Hikaru, presumably—had made a fresh pot of coffee, so Leonard poured himself a cup, downed it in spite of the heat, and then poured a second. He crooked a finger at Hikaru. When he came over, Leonard muttered, "I'd kick your ass for ignoring what I said about leaving Jo out of this if my head didn't hurt so bad right now."

"Would you like me to walk her to school?"

"...yes. Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said.

"Don't think we're not going to have words about this later. I mean it."

He turned to his daughter. "I'm going back to bed, Jo. Be good for Hikaru and have a good day at school.

"Feel better soon, Daddy," she said with a small smile.

Leonard managed to lean down and kiss the top of her head without wanting to vomit, then went back upstairs with his coffee. He put it down on the nightstand before promptly dropping face first onto the bed again, pressing as much of the cool side of the pillow against his head as he could manage without smothering himself. Then he fell into a light doze, leaving the coffee untouched next to him.

Some time later, he was vaguely aware of the front door opening and closing, presumably as Hikaru and Jo left to walk to school. Of course they got along famously. It was just his luck that his daughter and his whatever-Hikaru-was would instantly become the best of friends. He fell asleep again.

Leonard had thought that his head hurt too much to dream, but somehow he did. Before he was even aware of any time having passed, there was a quiet tap at the door, clearly calculated to be loud enough to get his attention, but not loud enough to bother his head. Hikaru was standing there, holding a tray. From the smell of things, it was piled with fried foods that Leonard would normally try to avoid, but were exactly what his hangover wanted.

He sat up, starting to feel more human already just from the scent. "If you're always going to cook, you can stay," he said, only half joking.

Hikaru stayed.

Things settled into an easy rhythm after that. Leonard took a job in town as a mechanic, with far more normal hours than he could ever have hoped for from the hospital. He hadn't worked on cars properly since he was a kid helping out at his granddaddy's garage in the summer, but he found that the memories came back easily. Hikaru also managed to get a job somehow, though Leonard didn't even want to ask how he'd managed that, considering he couldn't possibly have a social security number. He worked in one of the Starbucks in town and they shared the duties of getting Jo to and from school. Leonard managed to talk him out of wearing leather constantly and Hikaru started to look like he fit in.

Jocelyn wasn't thrilled by it, but Leonard hadn't expected her to be. He'd already asked Hikaru to make himself scarce when she arrived for Christmas, but they had to meet on Christmas Eve when Jocelyn came over for dinner and to bring Jo her presents.

"A lodger?" she said disdainfully. "Really, Leonard, I didn't realise your finances had gotten so bad since you left the hospital. Is he another student?"

"I didn't leave the hospital; I was fired. And yes, he is a student," he lied through his teeth. "Studying robotics."

"I should have known."

Dinner was uncomfortable. Hikaru didn't seem to like Jocelyn any more than she liked him—much to Leonard's surprise, considering how friendly and easy-going Hikaru was with everyone else he met—and if it hadn't been for Joanna talking constantly, the entire meal would have been conducted in an awkward silence.

"Hikaru's my backing dancer," Jo said halfway through eating. "He can do all the best dances, and he does lifts and things. He's really strong."

If Hikaru had been entirely human, Leonard was pretty sure he'd have burst into flames from the look that Jocelyn directed at him. " _Really_ ," she said, a world of meaning in that single word.

"Like in the Lady Gaga videos," Hikaru said, staring Jocelyn down. "She's Jo's favourite."

"I think I know who my daughter's favourite musician is."

"Who wants dessert?" Leonard said abruptly. He had no idea what was going on with Hikaru, but he didn't intend to let the two of them fight it out, especially at Christmas and in front of Jo.

He managed to get them through the rest of the meal without anyone getting stabbed. Then they all went into the sitting room to watch Jo open her presents from Jocelyn. There was a huge pile of them sitting next to the tree, easily doubling the number that she'd got from everyone else. Jo was thrilled, of course. She went around the room, showing everyone what she'd just opened, then discarding it for the next wrapped box.

Leonard hoped she was going to take a little more care with the presents from him, Janice, Hikaru and his parents when she opened them in the morning.

"Mommy, I love them all," Jo said, clambering into Jocelyn's lap to hug her.

"And what do you say, Joanna?" she prompted.

"Thank you very much. Will you play with me?"

"You're welcome. And I'd love to." She lifted Jo down to the floor and then kneeled herself. "What do you want to play?"

"Hikaru, want to help me do the dishes?" Leonard asked.

He nodded and as good as bolted towards the kitchen. Leonard followed him, trying not to roll his eyes.

"You're not a fan of my ex-wife, I take it," he said as soon as the door was shut and he was fairly sure Jocelyn wouldn't be able to overhear them.

"I thought I'd be okay." Hikaru pursed his lips and started to fill the sink with hot water. "She's just... you were exactly right."

"Okay. What was I right about?"

"Zero is Jocelyn."

Once Leonard worked out what Hikaru meant by that, he stared. "Jocelyn is a cyborg? The first one? I thought you said that only the later models had time travel. And what—what does that make Jo?"

"No, no! I didn't mean Jocelyn is Zero," he said. "Zero was based on Jocelyn. And cyborgs are sterile, anyway, but Jocelyn isn't one."

"I built a cyborg just like my ex?"

He nodded.

"That's fucked up."

"That's one way of putting it," Hikaru said, starting to wash the glasses from dinner.

Leonard sighed heavily and picked up a dish towel. "So, then. What did she do that made you dislike her so much? I've never seen you act like that before."

"I was the second Hikaru Sulu that you built, the one that you built for yourself. But you had to build a second one before we went into mass production because Zero destroyed the first. There were... unforeseen issues with the model. Something that never occurred in the later models. You tried to fix her programming, but it wasn't just in her programming. It was in her DNA. So she was decommissioned about six months before mass production started."

"So you hate her because she destroyed your predecessor?" Then he paused, half-dried glass in his hands. "Do I want to know exactly what you mean when you say 'destroyed'?"

"Probably not. She hadn't been decommissioned until after I was built, and she tried to do the same to me."

"But you know that Jocelyn isn't Zero."

"Of course I know that. But." He exhaled and tapped the side of his head with one soapy finger. "Human brain. Not machine."

"I can see that by your subtle grasp of rudeness."

"I'm sorry," he said, looking contrite.

"Don't worry about it. I was really that stupid, huh?" Leonard said, setting the glasses neatly on the counter as he wiped them dry. "It must have been superficial, though. Surely I wouldn't have been able to use an actual sample of Jocelyn's DNA to build a cyborg."

"Ethically, it would have been frowned on," he agreed. "You never said anything either way. And I didn't want to ask questions after what she did."

"Couldn't you just... go into the future and find out what happened?"

"It takes nearly three years for the time machine to spin up and find the safest coordinates to travel between. I can jump between here and where I came from pretty quickly, because the equations have already been solved, but if I wanted to go somewhere new it'd take a while."

"Have you been going back there? So no one realises you've gone anywhere?"

"It doesn't work like that. Time is all relative. I intend to return to the moment I left, so as far as the future is concerned, I'll be back as soon as I left. I'll be however many months or years older than I was when I left, but the others won't have a chance to miss me." He washed the plates and cutlery efficiently, placing them on the drying rack faster than Leonard could get to them.

Of course, Leonard hadn't expected Hikaru to stay forever. It was implausible and impractical, among other reasons. But hearing him state it so matter-of-factly— _I intend to return to the moment I left_ —was almost hurtful.

"When are you going back?" he asked, drying and stacking plates.

"I don't know yet. I just don't think the others would take it very well if they found out where I'd gone and why."

"Anything for a peaceful life?"

Hikaru smiled at him. "You shouldn't joke about it. I told you, we're not supposed to time travel. The others would drag me back kicking and screaming if they had to. Or they'd try to make it so I _wanted_ to leave."

"They don't sound like good people."

"Things are just different for us. We live by a different set of rules and I suppose I've broken a few."

"Are you telling me that if you don't go back, you'll be a—" He glanced nervously towards the sitting room and lowered his voice, just in case Jocelyn happened to be listening. "A _fugitive_?"

"No, of course not." Hikaru looked shocked at just the word. "But morally, my presence here isn't something that they can tolerate and they'll want to fix it by taking me home. Unless they never find out I was here in the first place."

"My head ends up hurting every time I try talking to you about this kind of thing."

"I'm sorry," he said at once. "Can I get you some painkillers?" He was halfway to the kitchen door before Leonard stopped him.

"Figure of speech, Hikaru," he said. "Just help me finish up the drying and I'll head back, and you can go up to your room or go out if you don't want to spend any more time with Jocelyn."

"You don't mind?"

"I'm going to spend the whole time wondering which one of you's going to punch the other first if you don't. Don't make me pull the two of you apart."

"Thank you," he said, looking relieved. "I'll go out. I want to see what people do on Christmas Eve in this century."

"Don't forget your keys."

"I never forget _anything_ ," Hikaru replied, looking affronted.

"One more thing," Leonard said. "No more time travel talk until the New Year. The holidays aren't a time for heavy thinking, at least not around here."

"Got it!" He finished the drying and clearing away quicker than Leonard thought was possible, then almost dashed out of the house, grabbing his coat and the ridiculous hat that had been the first thing he'd bought with his own money. Apparently he liked Jocelyn even less than Leonard did right now—something he also hadn't thought was physically possible.

The thought of Hikaru was the only thing that stopped Leonard from making the same mistake he'd made during Jocelyn's last visit. He could tell that she wanted to have sex again, and frankly, he did too. Part of him was always going to love her, but he knew he'd never get over their relationship if he couldn't draw a straight line under it. Every line he'd drawn so far had wobbled and let her slip back through. So when she leaned imperceptibly closer to him as they put Jo to bed, Leonard ignored her.

"We're not going to do this again," he said when they were downstairs.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you play the innocent, Jocelyn. I don't know if you regret getting divorced or not, but it's not good for either of us to keep falling back into old patterns. You have your new life and your new man, and we're trying to start over here."

"'We'?" she asked, frowning. He knew what was coming next. "You and Hikaru? He's a bit young for you, isn't he?"

"Me and _Jo_. But if I was seeing someone else, what business would it be of yours? Our marriage is over. I don't get to have any say over your life and you don't get to have any say over mine. Anything else is just nostalgia."

She exhaled heavily. "Good thing I got a rental car this time. I don't think I'd want to wait for a cab."

Leonard itched to tell her where she could stick her rental car, but he was pretty sure that wouldn't be a great idea. Instead, he just said, "Okay."

"I'll call you before my flight tomorrow. We need to talk about Joanna coming to L.A. for her birthday next year."

"She's too young to fly on her own, not to—" he started, but Jocelyn cut him off.

"Tomorrow," she said. "Goodnight, Leonard. And—merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas." He showed her to the front door, but this time, he didn't watch her leave.

By the time Hikaru got home—and he wasn't too sure when he'd started thinking of his house as being Hikaru's home as much as it was his and Jo's—Leonard had already gone to bed. He was just vaguely aware of the sound of a key turning in the lock and then Hikaru's footsteps coming up the stairs. It was strangely comforting to know he was there.

***

The realisation that he found Hikaru attractive hit Leonard in a rush the day before Jo's birthday. He was helping Jo with her packing while Leonard sorted out his own suitcase. It didn't take him very long to pack; it never had. He left his suitcase in his room and went to go and see what they were up to.

Jo appeared to be in the process of pulling everything out of her closet and showing it to Hikaru, who was either nodding or shaking his head. Every time he shook his head, Jo dropped whatever she was holding onto the floor and went back for something new. Leonard cringed. When Hikaru nodded, Jo handed it to him and he folded it carefully and put it into the suitcase. After a while, he glanced up at Leonard and smiled crookedly.

"I hope you're going to clear this up while we're gone," he mouthed.

Hikaru nodded, his smile widening, and gave him a thumbs-up. Leonard felt his chest tighten a little, and he just _knew_.

He wasn't coming to L.A. with them, even though Jo had begged him. "I can't get the time off work, Jo, I'm really sorry," he told her. Leonard suspected the real reason was a combination of his metal skeleton, airport security and Jocelyn, but as Jo didn't know anything about that, Hikaru's reason was good enough.

Their flight left late that afternoon morning. It was clear from the outset that Jo hadn't inherited Leonard's fear of flying; she had her nose pressed to the window from the moment they were in their seats, while he sat next to her, his knuckles turning white from gripping the armrests. He was just glad that flights were getting much shorter as fuel-efficiency improved. Leonard was pretty sure he'd have needed sedation if he was expected to sit on a plane for any longer than two hours.

They took a cab to their hotel and checked in as quickly as they could, so Leonard could stand under the shower for twenty minutes and wash the smell of the plane from his skin and hair. Next time Jocelyn wanted Jo to visit her in L.A., Jo was going to have to do it unaccompanied.

"Can we get room service for my birthday?" she asked.

"But it's not your birthday yet," he said, scrubbing at his hair with a towel. "Don't you want to wait until tomorrow so it's special?"

Jo shot him a look that was unnervingly like one her mother favoured. "No."

They got burgers and fries from room service, and Leonard hoped Jo would think it was the best burger she'd ever eaten, because it certainly cost enough. But when he bit into his, he did have to admit that it was probably close to justifying the price tag.

The only good thing about flying shortly before Jo's birthday was that they were in a different time zone. In the past, Jo's birthday had usually been the cause of her staying up almost until midnight because she was so excited, but this time, she was ready to sleep by eight. Because they were sharing a bedroom, it was easiest for Leonard to go to bed at the same time as her. He didn't really mind. As tired as she was now, he knew she'd be out of bed too early in the morning for his liking and he wanted to get as much sleep as he could.

He didn't fall asleep straight away, though. He lay on his side, watching the headlights from passing cars flashing through the window and illuminating the wall, and he wondered what Hikaru was doing back at home in Georgia. Clearing up the mess they'd made in Jo's room, or even sleeping by now. It was increasingly hard to think of Hikaru as anything but a normal guy—and one who was house-sitting for him.

Leonard was still thinking about Hikaru when he did drift off.

To his surprise, Jo didn't wake him up until six the next morning, which was far later than she'd have slept on any other birthday, especially taking the time difference into account. The flight must have been more tiring for her than he'd initially thought. Ten hours of sleep was more than he could ask for at home on a normal day.

"Happy birthday, darlin'," he said. "There's something in my suitcase for you."

It wasn't a huge present. It looked, at first glance, like a normal flower hair clip. But on the underside was a switch that could be flipped and the tiny motor inside would activate and reconfigure the hair clip to another type of flower. He had built it himself, with some help from Hikaru, whose grasp of robotics shouldn't have come as such a surprise to Leonard as it had.

He waited for Jo to find the switch and then—a shriek of delight, followed by Jo jumping onto his bed to hug him.

"What do you say?"

"Thanks, Daddy," she said, hugging him again. "Did you build it?"

"I did, and Hikaru helped, so it's from the both of us. You can thank him when we get home."

"I will," and then she was captivated by changing the hair clip, running it through the full set of different flowers that they'd equipped it with. She insisted on putting it into her hair as soon as she got out of the bath.

They got breakfast in the hotel restaurant and then left for the apartment that Jocelyn shared with Clay. Jocelyn's parents had flown into L.A. for Jo's birthday as well, because they hadn't seen their granddaughter since the divorce. Leonard had always got along with Diane and John Darnell, so he paused in the doorway to greet John when he answered the door, while Jo ran past them both to find her mother.

"It's good to see you again, sir," Leonard said, shaking his hand.

"Didn't I always say you could call me John?" he asked with a smile. "You're still family, divorce or not."

He smiled back. "Is Diane inside?"

"She's in the kitchen with Jocelyn. They're baking a cake for Joanna. It's all those maternal hormones running wild, I think."

"And everything's okay with the two of you?" he started to ask, but then Jo started shouting for him from the kitchen. "I think I'd better go and see what that's about. Where's the kitchen?"

John nodded and stepped back to let him in, then pointed him in the direction of the kitchen. "It's just through there."

"Daddy!" Jo howled again, bolting through the doorway and grabbing his sleeve.

"What's the matter?!" he asked, alarmed.

"Mommy's having a baby!"

He hardly heard what Jo said, because Jocelyn had appeared behind her. She was wearing an apron, but it wasn't enough to hide her stomach, which was large and round and undeniably pregnant. It had been a very long time since Leonard had treated pregnant women, but he'd stake his medical reputation on her being in her seventh month, which would mean—and the bottom dropped out of both Leonard's stomach and his world.

"You didn't mention that at Christmas," he said weakly.

"Clay and I didn't want to talk about it until after I was out of the first trimester," Jocelyn said. "It's his first child; he wanted us to be careful."

"Congratulations. To you both." Of course, it could be Clay's baby. It probably was, in fact, and Leonard was worrying about nothing. Jocelyn had said that she and Clay were broken up at the time, but that didn't mean anything. She and Leonard were even more than broken up and that hadn't stopped them.

"Thank you."

Jocelyn's mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on the front of her own apron. "Hello, Leonard. Did you have a good flight?"

"No," he said. Then he came halfway back to his senses and exhaled, before leaning down to kiss her cheek. "Well, you know me and flying. It was uneventful enough, which is all I ever hope for. Jo loved it, though. How are you?"

"We're not doing so badly," Diane said, patting his arm. "John retired at the start of the year, so we've been planning a whole lot of trips. After Jocelyn has the baby, of course."

"Of course," he agreed. Then, with a meaningful glance at Jocelyn, he added, "I don't think any of us saw that coming."

"Such a lovely surprise for everyone," Jocelyn said. "If you'll excuse me, I need to finish up Joanna's cake. As soon as it's done, we can have presents."

"I am so excited for my presents," Jo declared.

If anything, Jocelyn had gone even more overboard with presents for her daughter than she had at Christmas. Diane and John had also got her quite a few, but that was more understandable when they hadn't seen Jo in over a year. Leonard had brought a few books and a stuffed toy with him in addition to the hair clip that Jo had already unwrapped that morning, but they seemed paltry in comparison to the stack of presents in front of Jo. He was fairly sure they'd have to ship them all back home, because it was going to cost far too much to try and bring them back on the return flight.

Most of the presents were things that Leonard was sure Jo would discard in a few short months, but she seemed thrilled with them. He didn't really hold with buying Jo the latest fad toy, but he had no say over what other people bought her. There were a few nicer items among the gifts, though; her grandparents had got Jo a particularly expensive-looking charm bracelet that he was sure she'd appreciate for a long time, though perhaps not for a few more years.

Clay arrived home just before they sat down to eat the specially prepared birthday lunch. Leonard wished Clay hadn't been able to take any of the day off. Even if Clay wasn't the guy sleeping with Jocelyn, he was still an incredibly grating person and one Leonard would never have got along with under the best of circumstances.

Jo was happy to play with her new toys for the rest of the afternoon, while Leonard tried to avoid both Clay and Jocelyn. He couldn't very well leave, even for an hour or two.

"You don't look particularly comfortable," John observed quietly.

"I'll be honest with you; this isn't exactly my ideal social situation," he said just as quietly.

"That makes sense. But Jo's having a good time, and that's all that really matters, isn't it? It's one day."

He nodded. "It's a shame that Jocelyn decided to move so far away after the divorce. I think Jo would do a lot better if her mom was closer."

"You could get a job in a hospital here. It'd pay a lot better than that hospital you worked at back in Georgia."

"Can you really see me being happy in a big city like this?" Leonard asked with a laugh. "This has always been Jocelyn's world, not mine. She was never happy in the countryside."

John smiled and glanced towards Jocelyn, who had lowered herself to the floor with Clay's help to play with Jo. "What about Jo? Is she happy in the country?"

"She has her friends there and she likes her school. I wouldn't want to uproot her when things are finally settling down."

"What if she came to live here in L.A. with Jocelyn?"

He'd wondered if the conversation had been leading up to that. As much as Diane and John liked him, they'd always been of the opinion that Jo should have gone to live with Jocelyn when they divorced. It wasn't an uncommon view; Leonard had met plenty of people who assumed that Jocelyn must have died when they found out he was parenting Jo alone.

"If Jocelyn wants something in the custody agreement changed, she's going to need to take it through the courts," he said. "I know she's your daughter and you love her, but I've got full custody of Jo for a reason."

"You always were strong-willed, Leonard."

"I'm just trying to do right by my daughter," he said.

"We're just trying to do right by ours," John said, which ended the conversation fairly quickly. Leonard could have said more, but for the sake of peace on Jo's birthday, he decided he'd better keep his mouth shut.

He got his chance to talk to Jocelyn alone just before they left. Jo was saying goodbye to Clay and her grandparents, giving them just a few uninterrupted moments together.

"Well?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"Is it mine?"

Jocelyn sighed and touched her stomach. "I don't know," she said. "And I'm not going to find out. Clay thinks it's his and I think there's a high chance that it is."

"What do you mean, you're not going to find out?" Leonard scowled at the wall next to her head. "If the kid's mine, I have a right to know. Do you think I wouldn't pay child support or something? Dammit, Jocelyn, you know I would."

"It's not that. I just—I have my reasons," she said quietly.

"Oh, well, as long as _you_ do," he said, knowing it was unfair of him the moment it left his mouth. "God, I'm sorry, I—"

"It was good to see you again, Leonard," Jocelyn said with a tight, forced smile. Then Jo ran up to them and hugged her, effectively ending the conversation.

Slightly tense farewells were exchanged and Leonard took Jo back to the hotel. They flew back to Georgia the next day.

On the plane home, all Leonard could think about was Jocelyn's pregnancy. About halfway back, a thought occurred to him that distracted him even further from the flight—the thought that Hikaru might have already known about this. He might not, of course. This might be as big a surprise to him as it was to Leonard, but something told him that Hikaru probably had a pretty good idea.

The longer he thought about it, the angrier he got. _What right does he have to come into my life and pick and choose what information he gives me?_ he thought. _I'll bet the son of a bitch even knows who the father is_. He almost forgot that he was on a plane.

As soon as they landed, he called Janice from the airport to see if she was free.

"Sure," she said. "I can come by and pick you up if you want to save on the cab fare. I'll be there in about twenty minutes."

"Thank you, Janice," he said.

"It's my pleasure. I've got a little something for Jo for her birthday, anyway."

"We're going to miss you when you graduate," Leonard said. "Our own personal cab driver."

Janice laughed and hung up the phone. She was as good as her word; not twenty minutes later, she was waiting outside the airport for them. The last leg of the journey was filled with Jo telling Janice all about the trip. Janice shot Leonard a sympathetic look when the topic of Jocelyn's pregnancy came up, but she didn't say a word, much to his relief.

At the house, they carried the suitcases inside and upstairs. Leonard half-heartedly started unpacking his, but gave up when he realised he couldn't concentrate on it and was neatly stacking his dirty clothes on his pillow. He went to Jo's room and knocked on the door.

"I'm going to walk into town and pick up some groceries," he said. "I'll be back later."

"We're going to go down to the creek and see if any of Jo's friends are around," Janice replied.

"Play safe, Jo," Leonard said.

"I'm really safe all the time."

"I won't take my eyes off her," Janice said with a grin. "See you later."

Leonard hoped that the walk into town would clear his head a bit, but he couldn't even think about where he was going. In spite of his best intentions to head towards their usual grocery store, he ended up outside the Starbucks that employed Hikaru. It seemed that he wanted to confront Hikaru more than he'd realised, even though he wasn't sure if Hikaru was working today, so he pushed open the door and went inside.

Hikaru was there, as Leonard had hoped. He looked like any normal college kid in his apron and visor, standing behind the Starbucks counter with several other employees. None of them seemed to be doing anything.

"Leonard, hi!" he said, beaming. "You're back! Can I get you something to drink?"

"Did you," Leonard said through gritted teeth, "or did you not know that my ex-wife is pregnant?"

Hikaru's coworkers looked between the two of them. "I think you're due a break," one, presumably the manager on duty, said to Hikaru.

"But I just took my break," he said.

"You're getting another," Leonard told him. "Goddammit, Hikaru, get out here. I am not having this conversation in front of an audience."

He came out from behind the counter, pulling off his visor and running his fingers through his hair. He looked _good_ , Leonard realised. Apart from the apron, Hikaru was wearing all black just as he had when they first met. They went to the far end of the room, where they were unlikely to be overheard, and sat down at a table. "I guess you didn't have a good trip."

"Finding out Jocelyn is seven months pregnant, and, oh, guess who had sex with her about seven months ago? No, that didn't exactly make for a great trip, finding out that I could potentially be a father _again_. So, tell me. Did you know about this?"

"I knew Jo had a sister," Hikaru said evasively. "Didn't Jocelyn tell you if she was yours?"

"Jocelyn says she doesn't know whose baby it is. She told Clay it's his, but she doesn't know for sure and she has no intention of getting a DNA test." Then he paused. "It's a girl?"

"Jo had a sister," he repeated. "I don't know if it's the same baby."

"But Jo's sister was Jocelyn's daughter too?"

Hikaru rested his elbows on the table and sighed. "Yes," he said eventually.

"You know, for someone who's supposedly here to help me, getting information out of you is like getting blood out of a stone sometimes. Unless you're talking about yourself."

"It's not that I don't want to tell you. It's just that, well. Some things might have been changed by my presence, or might be different for some other reason. I don't want to give you the wrong information. And if I manage to change one of the things that I wanted to change, there's no point in telling you how things worked out in my timeline. You'd just dwell on them." He ran his fingers through his hair again and looked across the table at Leonard. "Are you sure you don't want a drink? I could make you one that's mostly coffee, if you wanted."

He waved him off. "It's fine; I'm not thirsty."

"How about a snack? I could—"

" _Hikaru_."

"Sorry."

"I know you're not lying to me," he said, leaning forwards. "But sometimes, it feels like you are. So I need you to make me a promise."

"Okay. What's the promise?"

"You can either tell me everything you know about my future—my possible future—whatever it is, or you can tell me nothing. No more about you, no more about the time travel. Anything that you might want to say, you should just keep it to yourself. And if you don't like that, then I guess you can just go home." Leonard wasn't sure where that last part came from. He didn't _want_ Hikaru to leave.

"I am going to go home," he said. "Just not yet."

"I need to hear you promise me." He was aware of several of the workers watching them. God only knew what they must have been thinking.

"I promise I won't talk about it any more," Hikaru said finally, looking vaguely unhappy. If Leonard didn't know him as well as he did, he might not have noticed the way his mouth turned down slightly at the corners, or the way his gaze flicked down to Leonard's hands and then back up to his face again.

"Thanks. What do you want for dinner? I'll go pick something up before I head home."

"Anything's fine," he said. "Listen, I'm sorry for not telling you."

"Don't worry about it. Nothing either of us can do now." He stood up and handed Hikaru his visor. "I'll see you at the house."

He left Hikaru still seated at the table and went across to the nearest store, where he spent half an hour wandering the aisles with the same lack of concentration that he'd been suffering from since the plane ride, then decided it would probably be easier to just go home and order pizza when dinnertime arrived. Jo would almost certainly prefer that to anything he could pick up there and the way Leonard felt at that moment, he wasn't sure he could successfully cook anything anyway.

Janice stayed for dinner and the four of them had, objectively, a lovely evening. But Leonard could tell that Hikaru was watching him cautiously for the entire meal, possibly trying to judge how he was supposed to act now. He understood why Hikaru was doing it, but he couldn't help but be slightly annoyed.

Things only went downhill from there.

***

They didn't sleep together; not in a way that Leonard couldn't deny. And not because he didn't want to, but because he knew that Hikaru was going to leave; even if he wasn't in love with Leonard, that alone would be a good enough reason. But he was in love with the other Leonard—not the wrong Leonard, because that would mean he wanted to be the one Hikaru loved—and he couldn't abuse that. Fucking him would be taking advantage; it would be as big a mistake as sleeping with Jocelyn had been, even without the pregnancy.

Jocelyn sent pictures of the baby—Barbara—after she was born at the end of June. Jo was thrilled to be a big sister, but all Leonard could do was stare at them and try to analyse her features. Jocelyn's nose and jaw, perhaps, but those eyes... he couldn't believe they weren't his. She looked just like Jo had at that age; all Leonard and Jocelyn and nothing of Clay. He knew he was never going to know for sure if Barbara was his daughter, but he'd suspect for the rest of his life.

That evening, after putting an excited Jo to bed, he drank too much and watched pointless TV by himself for hours. He fully intended to go to bed and sleep it off, but instead Leonard found himself knocking on the door of the guest bedroom.

"Come in," Hikaru said. His voice was muffled by the closed door, but the confusion in it was still audible. Leonard hadn't ventured into the bedroom since Hikaru had moved in, preferring to let him have his own space. This was something new and they both knew it.

He was in bed already, reading a book.

"What are you reading?"

Hikaru held the book up and showed him the cover. "How much have you had to drink?" he asked.

Leonard shut the door behind him and came over to the bed, sitting down on the edge. "Some."

"Do you want to talk about what happened today?"

"Not really."

The mattress creaked as Hikaru leaned over to put his book on the nightstand, exposing more of his bare chest. It didn't exactly help Leonard's self-control, which was already weakening just from being so close to him.

"I shouldn't have come in here," he said. "God, you're just so—"

Hikaru folded his arms across his chest, but his body was tilted towards Leonard. "Do you want to leave?"

"No, not really. Do you want me to leave?"

"No, but—I wish you weren't only here because you've been drinking. I wish—"

Leonard's gut twisted and the only thing he could think of doing— _stupid_ —was to kiss Hikaru. He misjudged the distance between them, or maybe Hikaru was moving in to do the same thing, and ended up with his nose smushed into Hikaru's cheek. Hikaru made a quiet sort of noise deep in his throat and his hands came up to curl in the front of Leonard's shirt. Their teeth clacked together uncomfortably and Leonard's mouth was too dry all of a sudden.

He dragged his fingers through the short, silky hair at the back of Hikaru's head, inadvertently pushing him down towards the mattress as he tried to adjust the kiss so he could breathe. Leonard ended up flat on top of him, holding him there with his full body weight. Deep down, something reminded him that Hikaru would have no trouble pushing him away if he didn't want to be there, and the idea that Hikaru was willingly doing this was strangely arousing.

The comforter between them was thin enough for him to feel Hikaru's dick, full and hard and trapped between their stomachs. He thought Hikaru might be naked under the sheets, and that and the physical proximity were more than enough for Leonard to start getting hard as well. He hadn't had that much to drink after all, it seemed.

Hikaru rocked up very slowly and slid his tongue over Leonard's bottom lip, urging Leonard into deepening the kiss. He tasted like toothpaste; so mundane that Leonard didn't really know what to do with the knowledge. Stopping didn't seem like it was even an option. Leonard held still, letting Hikaru move underneath him as he licked inside Hikaru's mouth, tasting more than just the toothpaste.

After a while, his movements got too much and Leonard abandoned the kiss, breathing heavily and erratically. He pressed his mouth to the side of Hikaru's neck and kissed him there, careless with his teeth. Hikaru's hips jerked and they finally found some kind of rhythm, grinding against each other like teenagers. It reminded Leonard of another night long ago, when he was in med school. One night, with his roommate. Something he thought he'd left in the past.

Between the memory and the sensation, he lost himself for a time, thrusting mindlessly. And then Hikaru's whole body tensed beneath him and—arching up—raised, lifting them both off the mattress. He let out a strangled sort of moan.

"Oh, god," Leonard said, awkwardly pulling away. "I can't—god."

"Leonard?"

He almost fell off the bed in his eagerness to get away, stumbling out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, where he locked the door behind him. There was no lock on his bedroom door, so it felt like the most sensible place to go for privacy to deal with his erection.

The house was well-soundproofed, so he felt safe in flicking on the shower and stripping out of his clothes. It wouldn't disturb Jo. He stepped under the spray so he could wrap one hand around his cock and press his forehead against the cool tiles, trying to think of anyone but Hikaru and his dark, inviting eyes. He couldn't.

***

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it.

It was the beginning of a trend that recurred, however infrequently, over the next two years. Every time it did, Leonard hated himself the next day for using Hikaru and apologised profusely the next morning, promising that it wouldn't happen again. But it did. Not frequently, but too often. Hikaru never complained or said no—more often than not, the only thing he said other than Leonard's name was "yes"—but Leonard couldn't shake the feeling that he was using him; that he was taking advantage of his feelings. The guilt was unbearable, and he began to avoid Hikaru when it was at its worst.

It didn't make him feel any better, but it didn't make him feel any worse, either.

***

In the summer of the year Jo turned nine, everything changed again. The awkwardness between Leonard and Hikaru had grown to the point where they only really spoke when Jo was there, and Leonard felt guilty about it every time. He knew it was his fault and he knew that Hikaru didn't deserve it, but he'd got himself into a position where he didn't know what he could do about it.

When Jo was around, things seemed almost normal. They spent time together, took Jo out on weekends, helped with her homework. They even sat in the sitting room like a family and watched the Mars landing as it was broadcast, the same way that Leonard's grandfather had watched the first moon landing as a child. He remembered the stories he'd been told about watching it and was strangely glad that Jo would have something like that to tell her children and grandchildren about. Hikaru pointed out tiny, seemingly inconsequential details that Leonard knew must be important one day in the future and Jo seemed fascinated.

"Maybe I could go to Mars," she said sleepily as Leonard kissed her goodnight and tucked her into bed later that night.

"Do you want to be an astronaut when you grow up?" he asked.

"I don't know. But I'd like to go to Mars."

"Darlin', you can do anything you want." He kissed her forehead again and crept out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. Hikaru was waiting outside. "Can she go to Mars?" he asked. "Is it possible in your time?"

He nodded. "It's not exactly a day trip, but they established several bases on the surface and people can visit, or even move there if they have useful skills. It's not even very expensive any more."

"Did you ever go?"

"No, I always wanted to, but... you don't like flying. I didn't want to leave you for a few years just to visit Mars."

"You shouldn't sacrifice your dreams for any one person," he said, feeling kind of hollow inside at the thought of how much Hikaru must have given up because he loved the other Leonard. He was just doing the same thing again by coming back in time the way he had. "That's not what love is."

"Isn't that what you did by going to medical school instead of continuing to study robotics? You wanted to please Jocelyn and your father."

"I never said I was perfect." He pursed his lips.

"I can't change it now," Hikaru said. "I can't even fly in an airplane now, but I knew that would happen when I decided to come back here."

"You could go back."

"I will when the time comes. You don't have to worry." There was a slight edge to his voice.

"I'm not worried," Leonard said, feeling slightly wronged—and then feeling worse because of that. He shouldn't be surprised that Hikaru felt that way, not really. "I'm not trying to hurry you away, dammit. You can stay as long as you please; you're a grown man."

"Cyborg. But I don't age, you know that."

"Whatever," he growled. "I'm going to bed."

Some time later that night, unable to sleep but unwilling to do anything about it, he realised that it was the longest conversation they'd had in months that wasn't about groceries or Jo. After that, Leonard made more of an effort to talk to him. It didn't always work, but things between them finally seemed as if they were warming up again, even if it was a slow process. Hikaru seemed cautious and Leonard really couldn't blame him. They talked about Mars most of all, at first of its place in the future and then more of the abstract, until it became almost meaningless as an actual object; it was just a metaphor for the things they'd both given up.

"I was waiting for Mars," Hikaru said one evening.

"You can't wait for Mars," Leonard replied.

"I know that now."

They exchanged a meaningful look as Jo dragged herself into the kitchen for a glass of water.

She had been sick for what felt like weeks with a cold that dragged on and on. Nothing seemed capable of shifting it, no matter how much bed rest she had or how many glasses of orange juice she drank, so Leonard assumed that she'd caught one of those lingering summer colds that exist only to make everyone's life miserable and moved on. The garage was especially busy that year and Leonard had been picking up more shifts than he normally would, leaving Jo with Hikaru most of the time.

She'd even visited her mother for a week, though Leonard had been unsure about her flying with a cold. Both Jo and Jocelyn had insisted that the trip shouldn't be cancelled, so, despite his reservations, Leonard and Hikaru took her to the airport in a cab and then spent an awkward seven days trying to cope with the change of atmosphere in the house.

When Jo arrived home again, she was still sick. She did seem brighter, though, so Leonard assumed that she was finally coming out on the other side of the cold and would be better before they knew it. It was more than time for it.

After another week of the cold and much persuading from Hikaru, Leonard took her to a doctor, who said she had a mild chest infection and prescribed a course of antibiotics. "Don't worry," he said. "It's banana-flavoured, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting her to take it. If she doesn't feel better after the course ends, bring her back in."

Leonard was pretty sure he remembered those banana-flavoured antibiotics from when he was a kid, and if he wasn't mistaken, they didn't taste anything like bananas.

"This is disgusting," Jo whined three days later. "Do I really have to keep taking it?"

"Yes," Hikaru said.

"Hold your nose and you won't taste it so much," Leonard advised.

"Mom wouldn't make me take it." She shot him a rebellious look.

 _You're only nine_ , he thought with a pang. Then, "Yes, she would, and you know she would. You don't get to play us off each other, Joanna McCoy. We still talk to each other and you can't divide and conquer to get your own way."

"But it tastes so _gross_."

"It does, but it'll make you feel better. You don't want to have a chest infection, do you? Now, open your mouth."

"I think I'd rather be sick," she muttered, then clamped her mouth shut.

Hikaru laughed, which didn't really help matters. Leonard shot him a look as dark as the one Jo was currently sporting and grabbed his daughter's nose himself, popping the small plastic spoon into her mouth as soon as she opened it to take a breath.

"Daaaaad!"

"If you don't finish it, you'll create an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria and you will end up in hospital and you will die," Leonard told her.

Jo didn't seem particularly convinced by that, but she did complain less until the end of the course. Just like her visit to Jocelyn, Jo seemed slightly better after the antibiotics, though—once again—it didn't last. It was only a few days before things took a turn for the worse in a way that Leonard could never have anticipated.

He was at work, busy under a car when he heard the phone ringing. "Matthew!" he called to the only other mechanic he knew was in the garage that afternoon. "Answer the phone, would you? I'm elbow-deep here."

"It's for you," Matthew said. "It's Hikaru."

Leonard was wrestling with a particularly stubborn connection and didn't answer for a moment. "Tell him I'll call him back."

"I really think you should take this."

There was something in the tone of his voice that made Leonard drop his wrench and scoot out from under the car immediately. He rubbed his palms against his coveralls and headed for the phone, nodding to Matthew. "Thanks," he said, then, "What is it, Hikaru?"

"You need to come to the hospital right away," Hikaru said. He looked pale and very serious in a way that Leonard had never seen before. "It's Jo."

"What's happened?"

"You need to get here now. Jo needs you."

"That's very reassuring," Leonard said, trying not to panic. His mind shot into overdrive, imagining everything that could possibly have gone wrong. Luckily, the garage wasn't too far from the hospital. If he ran, he could be there in fifteen minutes. "I'll be there. Where are you?"

"The third floor," Hikaru said, then the call disconnected.

He wracked his brain for what was on the third floor of the hospital: neurosurgery, paediatrics, intensive care. She could be in paediatrics for something innocuous, but the tone of Hikaru's voice suggested otherwise. "I've got to go," he said to Matthew. "I'm sorry."

"I hope she's okay," he replied.

Leonard nodded to him briefly and then took off, not even pausing to take off his stained coveralls. If Hikaru had called him, it meant that it was something he couldn't handle by himself—and that almost never happened. That was enough to really scare him.

Though it made his throat raw and his lungs burn, he made it to the hospital faster than he would have expected. Still, it was one of the few occasions when he wished he still had a car.

He didn't recognise the woman behind the reception desk, though that shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise, considering how long it had been since he worked there. In a way, Leonard was grateful. He knew the chances of running into an old colleague were fairly high, but he was uncomfortable with the whole idea.

"Joanna McCoy," he gasped, trying to catch his breath. "I'm her father. I know she's—third floor, but—"

The receptionist did something on the computer in front of her, her fingers moving in a complicated pattern across the screen. "She's been admitted to paediatrics for tests."

"Thank you," Leonard said, "thank you." He took the stairs three at a time, despite his lungs barely being recovered from the run to the hospital. When he reached the third floor, Hikaru was waiting at the top of the stairs to lead him through the ward.

"You have a lot of explaining to do," he said, pointing at Hikaru.

"She got a nosebleed and it wouldn't stop," Hikaru said. "I didn't know what else to do. You need to come and talk to the doctor."

"If it was just a nosebleed, why has she been admitted? Goddammit, Hikaru, what's the matter with—"

Hikaru gripped his wrist tightly enough to hurt. The shock of it silenced Leonard, who gaped at him in surprise. "Shut up," he said, somewhat unnecessarily at that point. "Come and talk to the doctor."

Leonard didn't recognise the doctor Hikaru led him to. He was middle-aged and harried-looking, and introduced himself as Doctor Bailey. "You must be Leonard McCoy, Joanna's father," he said. "I'm going to have to keep this brief, I'm afraid; we're extremely busy this afternoon."

"Go ahead."

"Our initial tests have determined that Joanna has an extremely low white blood cell count. Taken in conjunction with the other tests we've had back, this does suggest leukaemia, I'm afraid, and at the moment we..."

All he heard was the word "leukaemia" and everything else faded out, leaving him alone with the immediate thought, _This is it. This is why Hikaru came back_. There was no way he could say anything in front of Doctor Bailey, but he looked across at Hikaru and the expression on his face told Leonard everything he needed to know.

"What?" he managed.

"We need to do some additional tests to find out exactly which type, so we know how to treat it. Until we know that, I can't give you any kind of a prognosis." Bailey flipped through the chart he was holding. "Do you have any questions?"

"Does she need to be transferred to a different hospital?" Hikaru asked. "I mean, is there a specialist she needs to see somewhere else?"

"Unless the tests show up something very unusual, we should be fine here. I'm a fully qualified paediatric oncologist, I promise. We'll know more within a few days at the very most. Obviously, we will need to keep Joanna in for the duration of the testing, but we'll look after her very well." He smiled at them. "Is there anything else?"

Leonard couldn't find his voice to reply.

"No," Hikaru said for him. "Not at the moment, thank you."

"Well, in that case—"

"Why does the hospital have a paediatric oncologist?" Leonard asked, finally getting something out. "We never had one when I worked here."

Bailey glanced at him. "You can go in and see her now."

"Does she know?"

"No; your partner said you're a doctor and Joanna would be better off hearing it from you."

"He's not my _partner_ ," Leonard started, but Doctor Bailey was already hurrying off in response to an alarm from the other side of the ward. "You're not my partner," he said to Hikaru.

"I know. I think he got the wrong idea."

"Really? Do you?"

Jo had her eyes closed, but she opened them when the door handle turned and Leonard came in, followed closely by Hikaru."Hi, Daddy," she said quietly. "Are you going to tell me what the doctor said?"

"Hey, darlin'." Leonard wished the doctor had just told Jo before he arrived. He didn't have the slightest idea of where to start with this, so he sat down next to the bed and took Jo's hand in his own. "I guess you know by now that you're pretty sick." _Idiot_ , he thought. _That wasn't how to start_. When Jo nodded, he continued. "You have a thing called leukaemia. It's a type of cancer in your blood and your bones."

"I know," Jo said. "Molly and Darren have it."

Leonard didn't know if he was more surprised that two of Jo's classmates were sick as well or that she had never even mentioned it before today. "Well," he said after a long pause, "that's good to know. So you know that it's something that the doctors can try to make better?"

"I know," she said. "But all my hair's going to fall out, isn't it?"

He paused again. "It might. We can—we can get you a really good wig if it does." Somewhat unsurprisingly, Jo started to cry. Leonard wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, rocking her slightly. "Oh, Jo, don't cry, honey. It's going to be okay. I _promise_ , we'll make you better and it'll all be okay."

"I don't want to be bald," she sobbed against his chest, clutching at his coveralls. "Daddy, please, don't let them make me bald."

"We could get you a purple wig," Hikaru said awkwardly.

"As many wigs in as many colours as you want," Leonard agreed, but Jo kept crying. He could feel his eyes starting to get wet as well, tears leaking slowly from the corners. He couldn't handle this. He had no idea how he was supposed to come to terms with it himself, let alone enough to comfort Jo.

In the end, he settled on letting her cry it out. Holding that kind of thing in never did anyone any good, and she did appear to feel better once she'd got it out of her system. He wished he could do the same but doing it in front of her would only make Jo feel worse, he knew. For now, he was going to have to be the strong one. Then Hikaru squeezed his shoulder gently and he realised he might not have to do it alone. Maybe it had been selfish of him to assume he would.

"Do you need anything from home?" Hikaru asked Jo. "We can bring it in tomorrow. Your own clothes, maybe?"

"Yeah," Jo agreed in a small voice. "This is itchy."

They didn't try to have any more conversations about the seriousness of the situation or what was going to happen next. Hikaru sat down on the other side of the bed and held one of Jo's hands, and he and Leonard did the best they could to take her mind off it. When—all too soon—visiting hours ended, a nurse gently shooed them out of Jo's room and told them they could come back tomorrow.

"But she needs me," Leonard said. "Do you have kids? How can you understand?"

"I'm sorry," the nurse said, shrugging his shoulders, "but rules are rules."

Leaving her in the hospital broke Leonard's heart a little, in a way he'd never imagined could happen. It wasn't like the sort of heartache he'd envisioned when Jo left for college. It wasn't like anything he could think of at all—just a sick, hollow, broken feeling far too deep inside of him.

He and Hikaru walked home in silence.

At the house, there didn't seem to be anything else that Leonard could do, so as soon as he'd changed out of his work clothes, he slumped down onto the couch and switched on the TV. He flicked through the channels for a while, but—as was so often the case these days—there wasn't anything worth watching. The news was too depressing and he really wasn't in the mood for a sitcom. He was vaguely aware of Hikaru moving in and out of the room, and then the sound of voices from the kitchen.

After a little while, he came back in and stood by the couch. "I phoned Jocelyn," Hikaru said. "And Janice. She's coming from Atlanta. She'll be here in the morning, she said."

"You phoned Jocelyn?" he repeated. "Is she coming?"

"She can't. She has work and—you know."

Leonard knew. "I thought you hated Jocelyn."

"I don't hate her; I just don't like her very much. But Jo is more important. She must need her mom as well as her dad right now."

"And Janice. And you," Leonard said, staring at the floor. "Jesus, Hikaru."

Hikaru sat down next to him on the couch, crossing his arms and hunching over. "Do you want something to eat?" he asked after a while. "I know you didn't eat your lunch, so you haven't had anything all day. It's not good for you."

He didn't ask how Hikaru knew that. "I ate breakfast. I'm fine—not hungry." He didn't look across at Hikaru. "Thanks," he added eventually.

"You're welcome."

Leonard clenched and unclenched his fists, wondering how to bring up the thought that he couldn't shake; that after three years, Hikaru had never told him the most important thing. In the end, he decided against saying anything at all. He could be wrong—there was so much tension in the room that he could have misread the situation. The look on Hikaru's face wasn't necessarily because he'd known all along.

"I don't know what to do. I'm her daddy. I'm supposed to be able to protect her."

"This isn't your fault," Hikaru said quietly. "You couldn't have seen this coming."

He put his head in his hands. "All the same, I should have," he mumbled.

"That's pretty stupid."

"What did you just call me?"

"You heard me," he said. "You're beating yourself up over something you have no control over. It's stupid."

Leonard looked up at him properly. "You should shut up now."

"Okay, but you're still being stupid."

He let out a choked half-laugh—or maybe it was a half-sob—and wiped at his eyes. "Jesus," he said. "Goddamn, Hikaru, you're in a mood today."

"Everyone is always in a mood," Hikaru said in a confused voice.

For some reason, that set Leonard off completely, his shoulders shaking with poorly suppressed and slightly hysterical laughter. Hikaru gave him a startled look—which only made Leonard laugh harder—and then moved closer, sliding one arm around his shoulders in what was clearly meant to be a comforting fashion.

"It's okay," he said.

Afterwards, he wasn't quite sure why he did it, but something made Leonard touch Hikaru's jaw lightly. Then, after a long moment, he slid his hand around to cup the nape of his neck and kissed him. As kisses went, it was nothing earth-shaking. The thing that mattered, Leonard realised, was that it was with Hikaru and it was something he'd never wanted to do more than he did then. For another long moment, Hikaru reciprocated, but then he stilled.

He didn't pull away, exactly, but there was a sizeable pause. "You haven't been drinking," he said.

"No," Leonard agreed. He took a shaky breath but kept his hand on the back of Hikaru's neck. "I haven't exactly treated you very well, have I? Can't think why you stuck around as long as you did."

"I had my reasons. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I'm a grown man, Hikaru; I know what I want." But once the kiss had stopped, he wasn't sure how to start it again—until Hikaru leaned in and did the job for him.

They stayed like that for a long while, pressed awkwardly against each other. The position was terrible but the kissing, on the other hand, wasn't awkward at all; it intensified until they were making out like they needed it to live. Hikaru's hands were everywhere Leonard wanted them to be, stroking over Leonard's chest and back and dipping tantalisingly towards the waistband of his jeans. In return, he dragged his nails over Hikaru's scalp and then clenched his fingers in his hair and tugged.

Hikaru moaned and moved closer, pushing himself against Leonard's hip. His fingers scrabbled for the hem of Leonard's t-shirt as he tried to pull it off, get closer and kiss him harder in one go.

"Okay," Leonard gasped. "Okay, stop. We need to—to get upstairs now."

"We do?" Hikaru said, squinting at him. His hair was a complete mess, which was somehow incredibly enticing.

" _Now_. My back's starting to hurt."

"I'm sorry," he said, scrambling up from the couch. His hands raised automatically to smooth his hair, and the stretch of his body drew attention to the obvious tent in the front of his trousers.

They bypassed Hikaru's bedroom by unspoken consensus, going straight to Leonard's room, where they undressed. That could have been awkward as well, but it wasn't. The way Hikaru looked at him—a look in his eyes that Leonard couldn't quite decipher—made him feel more than physically naked. He felt stripped down and exposed and, more than anything else, wanted.

Hikaru stepped up to him and kissed him again, and together they moved across the room. And then there he was, naked on his bed with a cyborg. With Hikaru, who was no longer just a cyborg to him. It was so odd, so surreal, that for a moment he forgot what he was supposed to be doing.

"Leonard," Hikaru said, snapping him back to himself.

He wasn't as muscular as Leonard had expected. Then again, that wasn't much of a surprise. He knew that Hikaru's strength came from deeper than what he could see, although what he could see wasn't anything to be sniffed at. Leonard slid his palm along the length of Hikaru's cock, then wrapped his fingers around it and stroked slowly.

"Leonard," he said again, though in a completely different tone of voice. Hikaru rolled on top of him, partly straddling Leonard's thigh as he rocked into his hand, then licked over the seam of his lips and into his mouth again. His hand found Leonard's dick, fingertips teasing along the vein until Leonard groaned and thrust up.

"Should have done this before," he muttered.

"I was never opposed," Hikaru said.

 _I'm an asshole_ , Leonard thought. Before he could say so, Hikaru did something with his hand that Leonard had no idea he liked until it was happening, and then he loved it, so what actually came out was, "I want you to fuck me." He squeezed Hikaru's dick for emphasis.

"I—okay."

He threw out an arm and managed to get the drawer of his nightstand open, fumbling inside for the lube he knew was there. It wasn't easy with Hikaru still stroking him, but he got there in the end.

"Have you done this before?"

"Yes," he said, taking the tube from Leonard's hand. There was a short pause—presumably as Hikaru prepared—before Leonard felt cool, slippery fingers against his inner thigh.

"I haven't done this in a while." _Which is obvious_.

"We don't have to if you don't want to."

"Trust me, I want to. Just—go slow."

Hikaru nodded and kissed him again briefly before mouthing over the edge of Leonard's jaw. His slick fingers nudged Leonard's entrance, pressing inside him slowly. The first wasn't bad at all and while the second was slightly less comfortable, it wasn't until Hikaru pushed a third finger inside him that Leonard felt the old, familiar burn of muscle stretching. He exhaled sharply and shifted his hips, lifting them into Hikaru's touch as he drew his legs up to his chest.

"Okay?" Hikaru asked breathlessly.

"Mmnnh." Then something a little more colourful when Hikaru slid down his body and steered Leonard's cock into his mouth, licking beneath the head as he angled his fingers deeper. He actually whimpered, biting his lip hard.

It might have been something Hikaru was waiting for or it might have been a coincidence, but that was when he pulled his fingers free and positioned himself between Leonard's thighs, urging him to wrap them around his waist. He mouthed over the hollow of Leonard's throat, nipped gently at his collarbone and then carefully pushed inside him, exhaling hotly against his skin.

Hikaru paused for a moment, then started rolling his hips very slowly, clearly attempting to control his thrusts. "Is that okay?"

"God _dammit_ , stop asking if I'm okay and fuck me."

And he did, speeding up gradually—which Leonard was grateful for, even if he'd never admit it. They both scrabbled for traction when Hikaru started to fuck him in earnest, grabbing onto the sheets and each other. Leonard could tell he was holding something back—maybe because of his strength, maybe some other reason—but it didn't matter. He'd never been fucked like that before, with every move being the right one and every sensation radiating across his entire body until he was equally gasping for breath and for more. He came first, despite trying to hold off for as long as he could. But then again, Hikaru _was_ a machine.

When Hikaru came as well—not long after—they collapsed together in a heap of sticky limbs. To his vague surprise, Hikaru was heavier than he'd imagined, but not uncomfortably so. The warmth and weight against him was soothing and between that, the orgasm and the stress of the past day, Leonard fell asleep almost immediately.

It had the potential to be awkward again the next morning when he woke and Hikaru was lying in bed with him, looking faintly apprehensive from the far side of the mattress. Leonard felt like even more of an asshole for the previous three years.

"What are you doing all the way over there?" he asked gruffly, extending an arm to him. "C'mere."

Hikaru's crooked smile was brilliant as he rolled across the bed and carefully fitted himself to Leonard's body, brushing their lips together lightly. "Good morning."

For a very brief moment—at the sight of Hikaru's smile—Leonard thought he felt something that he hadn't felt in a long time. _Ass. Hole_ , he thought, sliding his thumb along Hikaru's jaw. "'Morning," he replied eventually. "Are we still good?"

"Yeah," Hikaru said. "Yeah, we're definitely good now."

Janice arrived a few hours later, as promised. Leonard hadn't realised quite how much he'd missed her until she was hugging him and asking how he was coping.

"I don't know," he told her honestly.

"Let's talk about it over—" she paused and checked her watch, then finished with, "—whichever meal you feel like having right now."

"What if I don't want to talk about it?"

"In that case, you can pay." Janice grinned at him.

He left out a short huff of breath. "Believe it or not, I missed you."

The meal—a brunch-like affair—was conducted largely in silence, but it was a comfortable silence. Leonard was grateful for a silence that wasn't forced or awkward in any way. Janice and Hikaru had obviously been better friends than he'd realised, because they were chattering away as if they'd never been apart when he came back from the bathroom.

"Should my ears be burning?" he asked.

"Not unless you're playing baseball for the Bravos at the moment."

"If I am, I didn't notice."

They went to the hospital after that, though the doctors were apparently deeply involved with Jo's tests and they didn't get to see her for much more than an hour. Leonard insisted on staying in the hospital despite that, just in case she needed them.

"You two don't have to stay," he said.

"I think we're staying anyway, whether you like it or not," Hikaru said. He looked across at Janice for confirmation, getting a nod in reply.

"Wild horses," she agreed.

When Janice stayed that night, she didn't say a word to Leonard about the guest room being free despite Hikaru's presence as a permanent member of the household. He did overhear a snatch of conversation between the two of them in the bathroom, as they brushed their teeth together—and Leonard really, really didn't know they were such close friends.

"Oh, I'm sleeping on the couch," Hikaru said, clearly answering a question.

"No, you're not," Janice replied. Her smile was audible through the door and the toothpaste.

***

The next day followed a very similar pattern; the only difference was that—with the bulk of the tests completed, even though they didn't have the results yet—they were allowed into Jo's room. Someone was with her for every minute of that afternoon. Leonard was the one sitting with her when Doctor Bailey came into the room, holding a sheaf of paperwork.

"We've got the results," he said. "Joanna has a type of cancer called therapy-related acute myeloid leukaemia. Obviously, there hasn't been any treatment before, but 'post-therapy' is the general term we use. It's rare in children but we have a very effective treatment. With chemotherapy, I'd be willing to say that we can acheive complete remission within a year. Two at the most. It may be necessary for Joanna to have a bone marrow transplant at some point, but—with any luck—that's avoidable."

"So I'm going to be okay?" Jo asked.

"Your chances are very good as long as we start treatment immediately. Which is something I need to talk to your father about."

Leonard didn't like the sound of that at all. He spotted Janice on the other side of the door and motioned her to come inside. "Stay with Jo for me, okay?" he asked. "I have to talk to Doctor Bailey."

"Sure," Janice said, taking the seat on the other side of the bed. "What's the verdict, Jo?"

"I think I'm gonna be okay," she said firmly.

Leonard bit his lip and followed Bailey out of the room. As soon as the door was closed and they were out of earshot, he asked, "What's the matter?"

"There's an issue with your insurance. I'm afraid it won't cover the treatment that Jo needs."

"Excuse me?"

"Unless you have some other way of paying, we can't treat Joanna."

"You're a piece of work, aren't you?" Leonard said. "You say in front of my daughter that her cancer is treatable, but it isn't if I can't afford the goddamn treatment."

"I'm afraid that this particular type of chemotherapy is still new enough that—"

"Fuck you," he said, which was childish, unhelpful and _extremely_ satisfying. "I've got no damn patience for doctors like you."

Bailey looked pained. "Mister McCoy, please—"

"It's _Doctor_ McCoy, as you well know," he growled.

"Then you should know that we can't start treatment without knowing how you'll pay for it."

"When I worked here, we always found a way." Leonard stared Bailey down until he started backing away.

"I'm sorry we can't come to a civil agreement," Bailey said, before disappearing around a corner.

"Goddamn condescending asshole," he muttered. Then he stood at the door to Jo's room for the next few minutes, trying to will himself to walk back inside. Somehow, it was harder than he thought it should be.

Hikaru walked up to him and handed him a cardboard cup. "Coffee," he said when Leonard gave him a blank look. "You should drink it."

"Thanks," he said, turning back to look through the glass of the door. He took a sip of the coffee, which managed to taste like cardboard as well. "This is disgusting. Did you make this?"

"I work in Starbucks," he said, looking vaguely affronted.

"I know; that's why I asked."

"It's hospital coffee, out of a machine," Hikaru said.

"I still don't understand why she has this kind of cancer," he said, suddenly changing the subject. He couldn't take his eyes off Janice and Jo. "She's never had chemo before, or radiation therapy. It doesn't make _sense_."

"Yes, it does," Hikaru said quietly. "The radiation."

"What radiation? I just said—"

"No, from the nuclear plant. It's in the creek. That's why Jo has leukaemia. That's why her classmates have leukaemia. That's why I'm here."

Leonard turned to stare at him. "What did you just say?"

"I tried to get you to move away because of the radiation from the old nuclear plant. It gave Jo cancer in my timeline as well."

He took a deep breath. "Why didn't you tell me that before?" he asked, trying to stay calm.

"I didn't want to worry you," Hikaru said. "If I could prevent it, you wouldn't have to worry."

"But you didn't prevent it. And you had _no_ good reason for not telling me, not one," he hissed. He was suddenly furiously angry with Hikaru. "All the beating around the damn bush, trying to get me to take a job without telling me _why_ it was so important, it was all pointless. All you had to do was _tell me_ , Hikaru."

"I couldn't," he said lamely. "You wouldn't have believed me. But—then you told me not to tell you."

"That's bullshit and you know it!" Leonard barked, and there was a sudden hush in the corridor.

Hikaru looked cowed. "I'm sorry. But it was diagnosed sooner this time, you can start her on chemo sooner than last time. Maybe this time, everything will be okay. That's all I wanted."

"My insurance doesn't cover the type of chemo Jo needs," he said, his anger draining out of him like someone cut the bottom out of it with scissors. "All the tests—all they say is I can't afford to make her better. There's nothing I can do to help her."

"Christopher Pike."

"What about him?"

"If you call him and take the job, the insurance you'd get would cover Jo's chemotherapy."

"It's a pre-existing condition," he said. "They wouldn't go for it."

"Call him," Hikaru said—ordered, nearly. The whole situation had definitely made him seem _pushier_. "You don't know him as well as I do, and I know he'll make something work. He _owns_ the insurance company."

"I don't think—"

"In the other timeline, you didn't call him until it was too late because you were too proud to ask for help."

It _did_ sound like something Leonard would do, but he didn't know if he could do it to Jo. If the other him had made that decision, well. No wonder he couldn't live with himself in the end, even if it had taken him over a century to do something about it.

"I'll call him tonight," Leonard said finally. "If he can help with Jo's treatment, then I'll take him up on the job offer. Are you happy now?"

"Yes, actually. What are you going to work on?"

"I reckon the chemo might not work," he said, trying to keep his tone light. Just contemplating the idea nauseated him. "So we could track down James Kirk and Christine Chapel and see if we can't make those nanorobots you have inside you come about a little sooner than they did in your timeline."

Hikaru smiled cautiously at him. "It's going to be okay," he said.

"Don't speak too soon," Leonard told him.

With all the tests that could be run completed, they took Jo home from the hospital that evening. There was nothing they could do for her without insurance or some other kind of payment, and the bill was already going to be high enough from the battery of tests she'd been subjected to during her stay. Leonard wondered if Chris Pike would cover that, too.

Janice left a few hours after that, hugging all three of them tightly before she did. "Call me if you need _anything_ ," she said vehemently as Leonard walked her to the front door.

"You're damn right we will," he told her.

"I'm really sorry I can't stay any longer, but two days was all I could get off at such short notice."

"We all understand. You've already gone above and beyond just by coming."

"Are you kidding?" Janice said. "You, Jo and Hikaru—you're my family."

With his throat tightening the way it was, Leonard couldn't say anything to that and so he just nodded. He watched from the door until her car was out of sight again.

He didn't phone Chris that night—too wrapped up in his daughter to want to leave her and make the call. He sat with Jo all night, until she fell asleep. Still mostly in shock, he watched her sleeping for another few hours until Hikaru gently steered him out of her bedroom and into his own.

In bed, Hikaru said, "You need to do it soon."

"I will."

"Tomorrow morning."

"I _will_ ," he said, reaching out to switch off the lamp.

Hikaru sighed against the back of Leonard's shoulder and tightened his arms around him, tucking his fingers into the waistband of Leonard's boxers. It was a strangely intimate gesture, but, at that precise moment, one that Leonard welcomed.

The next morning, he called Chris Pike.

"My daughter has cancer," Leonard said as soon as Chris answered, instead of a more traditional greeting.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said after a beat. "Jo must be nine now?"

"She is. So. I called to ask if that job offer was still open."

"I told you it would be."

"Before I take it, I need to know something." At a nod from Chris, he continued. "My health insurance: would it cover Jo's chemotherapy? Because the kind I have now doesn't, and we can't afford it without insurance. So I just—" To Leonard's embarrassment, his voice cracked slightly. He hated this; _begging_ because it was the only thing he could do now. But for Jo, he'd do anything. "If it does, I'll take it."

"Email me the details and I'll pass them on to the people who'll know," Chris said. "But I don't think it should be a problem. Orion Automata has very close ties to our insurance company's board of directors and I own the hospital that treats my employees and their families. We'll work something out."

"Thank you," he said, the tension rushing out of him.

"Don't you want to know how much it pays?"

"I just want my daughter to get better. Everything else is secondary."

Chris told him anyway, naming an obscene figure that was to be—incredibly—his yearly salary and not some kind of ten-year projection including bonuses. "And we'll provide you with an apartment, of course."

"Why would you do this for me?" Leonard asked.

"Because you're something special," he said. "I believe in that."

"And my work's going to make you a lot of money."

Chris laughed. "I won't pretend that doesn't appeal. How soon can you move up here?"

"The sooner the better." He looked across at Hikaru, who nodded and held up two fingers. "Two days at the most on our end."

Everything moved very quickly after that.

Between Hikaru's inability to fly without setting off national security alarms and Leonard's fear of it, they decided to rent a truck and drive up to New York, while Jo was flown up in a helicopter so her treatment could start as soon as possible. For once in her life, Jocelyn hadn't objected at all. She couldn't head straight up to the city because of Barbara, but she'd promised to be there within a matter of weeks—at the very latest.

Packing up all of Jo's belongings without her was one of the strangest experiences of Leonard's life. It almost felt as if she were dead already and he was packing up her entire life to be sold, given away or trashed, which made his jaw tense up and the skin of his face prickle.

Hikaru, both fast and methodical, packed up most of the rest of the house and stacked it into the truck largely by himself, though they did put up a charade of carrying out the larger furniture together. The neighbours would be sure to remark on Hikaru carrying the couch and the refrigerator around by himself—something that Leonard had to talk him out of.

"I won't hurt myself. The weight is negligible."

"We don't need the extra time _that_ badly," he said. "You'd be the talk of the town for the next hundred years and I'd like to come back here someday."

"You'd come back with me?" Hikaru asked, smiling at him. "Bring me back with you?"

Leonard was surprised to realise he would. "Only if you don't walk out that door with the fridge under one arm and the goddamn couch under the other," he snapped. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

"Okay." He was still smiling.

"You're not cute."

"I was never intended to be cute."

"I can see you trying and I'm telling you now, it won't work."

"Understood."

They hit traffic almost as soon as they got onto the I-95 and spent over twice as long as they should have crawling through South Carolina. It was around then that they discovered the truck's air con was broken. The windows wound down with no trouble, but without any kind of speed, there was no airflow through the cabin.

"I hate road trips," said Leonard.

***

The apartment they were given in New York was smaller than the house they'd left in Georgia, but not by much. It had three bedrooms, each with its own en suite bathroom, but the kitchen and sitting room were in one huge space. Leonard wasn't sure he liked it as much as he'd liked the house, but it came with the job, and the last thing he was going to do now was turn down the job that could save Jo's life because he missed his old house.

Chris was there to show them around the apartment the day they moved in.

"You must be Hikaru Sulu," he said to Hikaru, shaking his hand. "It's good to meet you. I didn't realise when I extended the offer to Leonard that I'd be getting his assistant as well, but he tells me that you're very talented."

"Nice to meet you," Hikaru said, looking like he wanted to bolt.

"Are you sure you don't mind living with Leonard? We could find you your own apartment in another building. Orion Automata has plenty of accommodation for its employees."

"It's kind of you to offer, but I like living with Leonard. It makes my job a lot easier."

"I keep odd hours sometimes," Leonard said.

"Sometimes he needs me in the middle of the night," Hikaru agreed. Leonard shot him a look. "You know, for work."

"Of course." The corner of Chris' mouth twitched slightly. "Do you want to continue the tour?"

"I think we can probably figure things out from here. Thanks, though."

"Yeah, I have to unpack some equipment," Hikaru said. He smiled and disappeared into one of the other rooms.

"He's eccentric," Leonard said in explanation. "Like you wouldn't believe."

"I got that. So, I just have one or two more things to let you know about, then I'll let you get on."

"Should I be concerned?"

"No, there's nothing to worry about. The camera at the building's entrance is broken at the moment," Chris told him. "But there's still audio, so you'll have some idea of who you're letting up here. There should be an engineer around to fix it at the beginning of next week. And I know I said you'd start work next week, but we've had some issues with the construction of your lab. It'll probably be another few weeks, so you can get settled in here while you wait."

"I wanted to talk to you about that. I need a programmer for the project I want to work on."

He nodded. "I'll send you a log-in for the personnel files so you can find someone suitable."

"I actually have someone in mind already," Leonard said. "But he doesn't work for the company—yet. I assume you've been keeping an eye on him, though."

"Go on," Chris said, crossing his arms.

"James Kirk," he said. "He's a grad student at MIT."

"I know Jim; we're funding his education. Why is it so important that you have him?"

"His thesis is pretty similar to some of the projects I've been working on. I think he'd make things a lot easier—and faster." It wasn't strictly a lie.

"You know what? If you go up there and you can persuade him to leave the basement he's been working in for the last four years, he's all yours."

"Now? He's working during the summer?"

"He says he prefers it," Chris said with a shrug. "I'll call ahead and make sure he knows you're coming, and that there's someone around who can take you to him."

"Thank you."

"This project of yours must be something pretty special. I hope it pays off."

"It will," Leonard said firmly. "And when it does, it's going to change everything."

"If anyone can keep that promise, it's you," Chris said. He shook Leonard's hand. "We'll talk soon. Good luck with Jim. You're probably going to need it."

"That fills me with confidence."

Chris just laughed. "Goodbye, Leonard."

Hikaru had far less in the way of belongings than Leonard, so he was the one who ended up unpacking most of the boxes containing Jo's things while Leonard went to the hospital to sit with her during her chemotherapy sessions. She looked very small and frail in the hospital bed, and Leonard hated the idea of her being there by herself.

"Hikaru and I are taking the train up to Boston next week for a work thing," he told her, holding the hand that wasn't clutching her bear. Despite claims that she'd grown out of it just a few months before, Jo's bear was never out of her reach these days. "Do you want me to bring you anything back?"

She shook her head. Jo still had all of her hair—it was still only her first cycle of treatment—but Leonard didn't know how he'd cope when it did start to fall out. His throat tightened at the thought, and he leaned in to kiss the top of her head gently.

"Why is Hikaru going too?" she asked. "Who's going to visit me?"

"Your mom's going to fly out soon, and she'll be here the whole time we're away, I promise. And Hikaru is working with me at the new job, so he's just coming to help."

"I'm glad you're friends again," Jo murmured. "I didn't like it when you weren't friends."

"We were always friends," he said feebly.

"Daddy, I'm not a baby. I know you weren't talking very much when you thought I wasn't around." She shot him a severe look.

"You look just like your mother when you look at me like that," Leonard said, attempting to change the subject.

"Is she bringing Barbara with her?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe you should ask the nurse if she has a phone you can use to call and find out."

"I already did," Jo said with a roll of her eyes. "They only have those old-fashioned phones here for patients. Just sound, no pictures."

"When I was your age, those were the only phones we had," he said. "You had to use a computer to see someone at the same time you were talking to them. You don't know how good you have it, Jo."

She managed a laugh, squeezing his hand tightly.

Leaving her in New York while he and Hikaru went up to Boston was one of the hardest things Leonard had ever done in his life. Even knowing Jocelyn was there wasn't enough to set his mind completely at ease. To his surprise he was actually happy when she arrived, even if the first thing out of her mouth insulted Leonard, Hikaru and their new apartment in the same breath. Somehow, he could tell she didn't really mean it.

They caught an early train, leaving at a little past six in the morning. Hikaru had opted to wear one of his leather jackets, something that Leonard hadn't seen him in for a while, and he was eating a bagel for breakfast. Leonard couldn't stomach food at that hour, so he just stared at Hikaru while they waited on the platform.

"You'll overheat later," he said warningly.

"No, I won't," Hikaru said, in an annoyingly serene way. He took a bite out of his bagel.

"Is this another cyborg thing?"

"No, I'll just take it off."

Leonard looked sideways at him. Eventually, he said, "Don't expect me to carry the damn thing."

"I could pick up the train; I think I can manage a jacket."

He decided not to dignify that with a response and climbed onto the train, looking for somewhere to sit. There was only one other person in the carriage, a man in a suit reading a newspaper. Leonard ignored him and went for the nearest seats.

"Can I sit by the window?" Hikaru asked, following him. "I want to look out."

"Yes, you can sit by the window."

In spite of that, they were only twenty minutes into the journey before Hikaru fell asleep against his shoulder, clutching at his hand. He squeezed Hikaru's fingers gently and pulled a book out of his bag with his free hand, feeling strangely reluctant to disturb him. For someone who claimed he didn't need as much sleep as a regular person, Hikaru took a lot of naps.

He slept all the way to Boston, with a death grip on Leonard's hand and his nose wedged against his shoulder.

They caught a cab from the station to MIT, where they went inside to wait for whoever was supposed to show them to James Kirk. The lobby was huge and beautiful, though far busier than Leonard had expected—but it didn't take long before he worked out why.

"Are you here for a tour?" a woman with a clipboard asked them.

"No, sorry, we're meant to meet someone here," Leonard said.

She gave him a blank look, then shrugged and hurried away again, presumably to try and wrangle the tourists into some semblance of organisation.

"Are we early or something?" he asked, checking his watch.

Hikaru took off his jacket and tucked it under one arm, tilting his head slightly. "No, my internal clock says we're on time. Well, we were on time. Now the person who's coming to get us is late."

"You're damn literal sometimes, aren't you?"

"I think you like that." He smiled at Leonard. "I'm going to walk around for a while, but I'll find you soon."

"Let me guess," he said. "You studied at MIT in the future and you want to see what it's like in the past."

"How did you know?" It looked for a moment as if Hikaru was going to lean up and kiss him, but instead he just brushed their hands together. Occasionally, Leonard was still startled by how well Hikaru knew him, even with the full knowledge of who he was and where he'd come from. "I only studied here for a year, though."

"Will you be able to find me?"

"I know where James worked during his PhD studies, so if it's the same in this timeline, it shouldn't be too hard." He felt in his pocket. "Also, I have my cell. I'll call you if I can't find you."

"All right. I'll see you later," he said.

As Hikaru turned to leave, Leonard reached out—completely impulsively—to touch his hand lightly. Hikaru smiled in surprise. "You will," he said as he walked away.

He waited in the lobby for another fourteen minutes, checking his watch more and more frequently as the time passed. A few people looked at him curiously as they passed but he ignored them. Eventually, a man who looked like he was in his late twenties or thereabouts came in from the campus side of the building and approached him. "Leonard McCoy?" he asked. He was tall, with shortish blond hair and glasses that didn't hide how bright his blue eyes were.

"You took your sweet time," Leonard said. "You're going to show me where I can find James Kirk, I assume."

"Sorry about that," he said. "I got held up, but I'll take you straight there now."

He nodded tightly. "What's your name?"

"George," said the man. "George Sa—Smith."

"Sasmith," Leonard repeated, slightly incredulously.

"No, just Smith. I have... I stuttered a bit. It's a nervous thing."

"Okay. Lead the way, then."

He followed George out of the lobby and into the next building. There were small groups of people scattered along the corridors, though Hikaru was long gone by then. He didn't have much of a chance to look around as they went; George was walking so quickly that Leonard began to suspect he had somewhere else he'd rather be.

"So," he said. "What are you studying?"

"Um," George said. "Architecture?"

"You don't sound very sure." He frowned slightly. "Are you a grad student too?"

"Yeah. Did Chris Pike send you?" he asked.

"You know Chris?"

"Um, well, through Jim. He's my roommate and I guess Chris Pike is paying for his degree so he'll come work for him when he's finished."

Leonard nodded. "Chris told me where I could find James—Jim, but he didn't send me. I came by myself. I came of my own accord," he corrected. "There's someone else with me, but he went to have a look around the campus by himself. He said he'd catch up with us later; maybe once we've found Ja—Jim."

"How do _you_ know him?" George asked. "I guess you don't, really, since you keep calling him 'James'. No one calls him that except his grandparents."

"You're right; I don't know him. But I'm familiar with some of his work and I think he could help me with a project I'm about to start work on."

"Oh, uh, are you a computer programmer?"

"Not really, which is why I need Jim. I'm a roboticist—medical robotics, specifically."

"I don't know—if he knows anything about that kind of thing."

They exited the building into bright sunshine, though heavy grey clouds were threatening from the horizon. Leonard squinted up at the sky and wondered briefly if leaving his umbrella back in New York had been a mistake.

"He doesn't need to know anything. It's a unique project, but I can't really explain why."

"It's top secret?" he asked, perking up slightly. "That's pretty cool."

"Something like that. I guess you don't get too many secret projects when you're an architect. I can't tell you what it is, though." _You wouldn't believe it_ , he added mentally. _Of course, without Hikaru to prove it, I'm not sure Jim Kirk will believe it, either_. "Is it much further?"

"Yeah, sorry," he said. The campus is pretty big when you're not used to it, I guess. And Jim works about as far away from everyone else as he can get."

"He's not a people person?" Leonard asked.

"He likes people fine," George said. He almost sounded slightly defensive, which was odd. "He just finds it easier to program when people aren't constantly trying to ask for his advice on things, or ask him out on dates. He says."

 _Maybe_ they're dating, he thought. "I prefer to work alone myself," he said aloud. "Or I did before I met my current assistant. He has a particularly... interesting world view."

"Would Jim be working with him too?"

"They'd both be in the lab with me, yes," he said, before biting the bullet. "You're asking a lot of questions. You and Jim must be pretty close."

"I look out for him sometimes," he said. "Take a left here."

They walked in silence for around another ten minutes, until they reached a building that looked far less interesting than most of the ones they'd passed so far. It was small and drab, with only a few windows and a large, rusting bolt on the door—though it wasn't closed or padlocked. Leonard supposed it was because Jim was inside, though it just looked as if the building had been abandoned some time ago.

George climbed the steps and opened the door. "This is it," he said. "He works down in one of the sub-basements. There's kind of a lot of stairs because the elevator broke and the department can't afford to fix it, he told me."

"That's fine; I still have the use of my legs."

There were a surprising number of stairs. He wondered exactly how far down the basement where Jim worked was, because it didn't feel like they were getting any closer. George managed to read his mind, or perhaps it was something that everyone who came down here thought.

"It used to be a bunker," he said. "There's only one more flight and then we're at the bottom."

"And that's where Jim works?"

He nodded. "That's where he works."

There was another door at the bottom of the stairs, which _was_ locked. "He locks himself in?" Leonard asked. He just got a shrug in reply, so he knocked on the door. "Hello?" he called through it. "My name's Leonard McCoy, I'm here to talk to you about a job."

"Sorry, man, I guess he's not here," George said after a few moments with no reply. "You had a wasted trip."

"He knew I was coming," Leonard said, frowning. "I don't have the time to waste on this kind of bullshit. If you see him, tell him he's not going to do his reputation in the industry any favours by behaving like this." He didn't really think he had that much influence over things, but maybe it'd make Jim Kirk think twice in the future about standing up someone who was coming to meet him with a job offer. Of course, if he was arrogant enough to think he could act like that in the first place, maybe he wouldn't care.

"Uh, sure."

They both looked up at the sound of footsteps on the stairs above them.

"That must be my colleague," Leonard said. "Unless it's Jim or someone else who works down here."

"He works down here alone. Even his thesis supervisor barely makes it down most of the time, uh, he says," George said. "He complains about it all the time, so it's probably your colleague. How did he know where to find us?"

"That's a very long story. Hikaru?" he called up the stairs.

"It's me," he said. "Did you find James?" He turned the corner and came into view. "Oh, you did."

"No, he's not in. We're going to have to find someone else, because he obviously has no interest in the project."

"But that's James," Hikaru said, pointing at George, who suddenly looked incredibly guilty.

"How do you know who I am, anyway?" he said. "I'm just a grad student."

"You _are_ Jim?" Leonard asked. He turned to face George—Jim—who was backing away slowly. "What the hell was that 'I'm his roommate' act about?"

"I didn't know who you guys are or what you want," he said. "I'm a programmer. Do you think people haven't tried to recruit me before? It's easier to find out stuff beforehand, so I can decide if I even want to consider it."

"That's pretty damn arrogant of you. I don't know if you're the right person for the job at all," he said.

"Maybe we should go into the office," Hikaru interjected. "We need him, Leonard. You know that. If we just show him..."

"And if he turns us down, then what? He'll know the truth and he won't have any reason to keep it to himself. He's already shown that he's a liar," he said, looking darkly at Jim.

"I can stop him from talking," he replied matter-of-factly, also glancing across at him. It was surprisingly threatening in its simplicity; Jim actually looked slightly shaken. "You have the key for the door, don't you? I think we should continue this conversation inside."

He unlocked the door, standing back to let Leonard and Hikaru past and then following them in. He sat down in the chair at the desk, fidgeting with the mouse. "Okay," he said. "If you're going to kill me, at least let me wipe all my research off the hard drives first."

"Why?" Leonard asked, raising an eyebrow. "Are you doing something illegal?"

"Not strictly speaking. It's just a little sensitive."

"Reprogramming the AI in spy satellites can be described that way, I suppose," Hikaru said, and crossed his arms.

A look of absolute terror passed across Jim's face. "How the fuck do you know about that?"

"I think you should take a look at something," Leonard said. He reached into his bag and fumbled for the ophthalmoscope that he'd put there earlier, knowing that this was going to be the easiest way to convince Jim that they weren't insane.

"Why do you have an ophthalmoscope?" he asked.

"I want you to take a look at Hikaru's retina. He's not exactly like normal people, and I don't think you'll believe it unless you see it with your own eyes."

Jim eyed Hikaru nervously, but he stood up and took the instrument from Leonard, leaning in towards Hikaru and switching it on. He didn't seem to want to get too close and there was no way he was going to see anything like that.

"I won't bite," Hikaru said, and took a step closer.

"Okay." Jim held the ophthalmoscope up to his eye and looked through it, exhaling shakily. Then he said, "What the _fuck_ is that?" and pulled away from Hikaru sharply.

"I'm a cyborg," he said. "It's difficult to get your head around, but I've only told Leonard before now, so I haven't really got the hang of doing it in a way that doesn't seem odd. Where I come from, it's not such a strange thing."

"Where you come from?" Jim said weakly.

"About a century and a half in the future. I know the you in that timeline. Actually, you're one of the people who created me," Hikaru said, clearly warming to his subject. "That's how I know so much about you."

"Hikaru, stop talking," Leonard said. "You're taking this too fast for him. You weren't that sensitive with me, but you weren't as fast as this."

"Time travel is _possible_?" Jim blurted suddenly. "I'm going to win so many bets with the physicists."

"It's not exactly time travel," Hikaru said. "More like shifting between dimensions, alternate universes. There's movement in time as well, of course, but some of the universes are off-set in time anyway. It's kind of hard to explain to humans. I've only met two who can really understand it, and they're the ones who gave us the ability."

"That's so science-fiction. So, you're a human?" he said to Leonard, who nodded.

"Completely. He turned up in my town about three years back and pulled this stunt on me, too. It took me much longer to believe him. Sometimes I'm not even sure I believe him now—"

" _Hey_ ," Hikaru said.

"—but then he does something like threatening to pick up a train."

"Could you pick up a train?" Jim asked with interest.

"Oh, yes. It's quite simple. You see, instead of a calcium skeleton, mine is made of platinide, and my core muscles are electromuscles instead of flesh, so my strength is superior to yours in almost every way. But we could never use that strength to rebel against humans, since you programmed us to be incapable of harming you."

"That's what I mean," Leonard said.

"I programmed you? That's actually pretty awesome. Is this why you guys came to find me? You want to build more cyborgs now instead of in the future?"

"It's not quite that exciting—but it's still really important," Hikaru added hastily, looking at Leonard. "You see, the thing that made building us in the first place possible was a medical advance that extended the human lifespan far beyond normal. And you and Leonard do that together, but you have to do it soon, because otherwise—just, you have to do it."

"My daughter is very ill," Leonard said, taking the ophthalmoscope from Jim and putting it back in his bag. "If we engineer a certain type of nanorobot, it'll save her life, and millions of other lives, too."

"So, what?" Jim asked. "I come to New York and work with you—for Chris—and we save the world? And then build robots with the ability to time travel? Like Terminator without the evil?"

Leonard sighed. "I guess that's pretty much how it is. But it's going to be hard work; people's lives depend on this. My daughter's life depends on it, and I swear to god, if you're fucking me around, I _haven't_ been programmed not to harm humans."

"I'm in, I promise," he said. "When do we start?"

"As soon as you can get down to New York. We're hoping to start work at the beginning of next month, if we can."

"I'll talk to Chris. He can facilitate all sorts of shit like you wouldn't believe."

Leonard nodded. "One more thing."

"What's that?"

"No more spy satellites."

"You're not the boss of me," Jim muttered. Then, after a meaningful look from Hikaru, "Alright, _fine_. I guess you _are_ the boss of me now."

By the time they left Boston, he wasn't completely convinced Jim wasn't actually going to ruin everything but Hikaru seemed calm. Calm enough to fall asleep on the train _again_ , in any case. Leonard sighed and did the same thing himself.

***

In comparison to Jim Kirk, enlisting Christine Chapel was incredibly easy. Leonard called her, asked if she'd be interested in a project that could change the face of robotics, genetics and medicine in one fell swoop, and she said yes with very little persuasion. She was already living and working in New York, and, by complete chance, had just left her previous job.

She also took the news that Hikaru was a cyborg far better than either he or Jim had, though they were in a lab at Orion Automata when Leonard broke it to her. Apparently, the other Christine had coded something into his DNA—some kind of signature—that this Christine recognised instantly when she analysed it.

"Holy crap," she said, and hugged Hikaru tightly. "I made a _person_."

"You know, you can do that with your ovaries," Jim pointed out, which wasn't the most sensible thing he could have done under the circumstances. It was the first time he'd met her and it wasn't exactly an auspicious start. In time, things warmed up between them, but for the first month or two, things were icy—and that was putting it mildly.

"I didn't realise it would be like this," Hikaru said quietly to Leonard during one of the worst rows. "It's like watching your parents fight."

"How would you know what that's like?" he replied, shooting him a quizzical look.

"I watched a lot of daytime TV when we were in Georgia."

"Oh, well; that clears it right up."

Progress was slow at first, not in small part due to the fighting, but also because no one was entirely sure of what they were supposed to be doing. Of the three of them, Christine seemed to have the most idea, though her work was extremely detail-oriented and she seemed to be moving at a snail's pace. As Hikaru had no specific job other than to provide samples of nanorobots and code, he spent most of his time in the lab helping whoever got to him first that day. The rest of the time, he was in charge of snacks and coffee, which seemed to suit him fine.

All in all, everything was going as planned—albeit not as fast as Leonard had hoped.

He and Hikaru were the last two in the lab one evening and neither was doing much in the way of work. Hikaru appeared to be going through the code on Jim's computer—no doubt without his knowledge—while Leonard was half-heartedly reading and re-filing papers that could help him work out exactly how he was supposed to do this.

"Go home," Hikaru said. "I'll finish up for you here."

"We need groceries and—"

"I'll get them on the way home."

"Do you know what we need?"

"Yes," he said, touching Leonard's wrist. "Go home."

"Stop being so damn pushy," Leonard growled. He did stop working, though he took one of the files he'd been reading with him so he could finish it off back at the apartment.

It was a nice enough apartment, but without Jo's presence, it just wasn't home yet. Leonard made himself a coffee and sat down on the couch with his file, flicking through to where he left off in the lab. It was a paper on nanorobotics by the team who had got closest to creating working nanorobots. They'd been working on it for a quarter of a century and still hadn't cracked it; he had no idea how he was supposed to manage within a matter of months.

Leonard had almost finished the paper when the doorbell rang. _Maybe Hikaru forgot his keys_ , he thought, though Hikaru always insisted that he never forgot anything. Half the time, it was worth asking if he had just to see the look on his face—and Jim specialised in that kind of teasing.

He put down the paper and his coffee with a sigh, going over to the door. The video link was still broken. "Hello?" he said into the intercom.

"Delivery for Leonard McCoy. I need a signature," the voice said. Female, young-sounding. He didn't think twice, just buzzed her up. He couldn't remember ordering anything, but it was possible that Chris had just decided to have something sent directly to his home address instead of the lab. When there was a knock at the door a few moments later, he answered it without hesitation.

The girl standing in front of him was shorter than he'd expected, barely a few inches over five feet. She was Asian, with an angular haircut that reminded him of the one that Hikaru had been sporting the first time they met—the one he'd thought looked stupid. She wasn't holding a package and her face looked _very_ familiar.

"Leonard," she said with a small smile. He could see a tattoo peeking out from beneath her top, tracing the contours of her clavicle; a familiar-looking string of numbers and letters.

"You're Five—Hikari," he said, staring. "Aren't you?"

"So he's been here. How long has it been?"

"Since what?"

"Since he arrived. Or since he left, if he's not here any more."

He considered, briefly, telling her that Hikaru was long gone. But, knowing how efficient Hikaru was, he'd be back from the store with their groceries before Leonard managed to get Hikari to leave. He didn't know what would happen when Hikaru got home, but he supposed it was already too late now, if the other cyborgs had found him.

"He's been here three years," Leonard said finally. "Or near enough to it."

"I suppose that makes sense. We thought he'd come here first, but he knew you better than anyone else. He'd have known how long you needed to accept him and believe what he was saying. How _are_ your daughters, by the way?"

"I've only got one daughter, and I think you know she's in the hospital."

"Oh," Hikari said. "Well, if that's the way you want it." She tucked her hair behind her ear and walked over to the couch, where she perched on the edge of the cushion and crossed her arms. If Leonard didn't know who she was and why she was here, he thought he might be attracted to her. She even moved like Hikaru, albeit with some obvious differences.

"Can I get you a drink?" he asked in spite of himself. He wanted to ask what she was doing.

"No, thank you," she said. "Do you know when he'll get back?"

Leonard folded his arms across his chest uncomfortably. "Are you really going to wait?"

"If you tell me to leave, I'll leave. I won't have any choice in the matter. But I'm going to find some way to talk to him, Leonard."

"I'm sure you are, but he won't change his mind. He's almost as stubborn as me."

"You forget that I've known him since he was activated," Hikari said, uncrossing her arms and lacing her fingers together instead. "I know what he's like. Of all of us, I'm the one he's most likely to listen to. That's why I'm here and not one of the others."

"You can't take him."

"He'll come willingly," she said.

It felt like a threat and Leonard's throat closed up at the thought. Something about Hikari's presence was unnerving; although he was more than used to Hikaru by now, she was completely alien. She didn't feel right.

"Is he like the first Hikaru?"

She looked sideways at him. "He told you about that?"

"He told me a lot of things," Leonard said.

"Yes, he's like the first. They were identical in every way. Some changes were made for the mass-produced line, but that's how it was for all of us. We're prototypes and prototypes rarely remain unaltered."

"What changed?"

"Programming, mainly. Fail-safes were added. Some deep programming to ensure the technology they possess couldn't be misused."

"Are you going to tell me what that means?"

"You ask a lot of questions," Hikari said.

Leonard guessed that meant no. They sank into another uneasy silence and he found himself considering asking her to leave after all. The only thing that stopped him was the thought that she might turn up at Orion Automata. If she was as strong as Hikaru, she could cause considerable trouble in trying to find him.

"We went to Georgia first, you know. Looking for you."

He glanced at her in surprise. "When?"

"A matter of days after you left, apparently. Finding you again took longer than we'd expected. We—" She cut herself off at the sound of a key in the door and stood up, and then Hikaru walked into the apartment. He stopped dead at the sight of her, the door swinging shut behind him. Despite his reaction, Leonard felt an immediate rush of relief.

The similarities between them were uncanny; even knowing that she was a female version of him right down to the genes wasn't enough to remove the oddness. Though in some ways, it made the entire situation even stranger. Leonard thought he saw something pass between them in that first long glance.

"Five," Hikaru said. He set the bags he was carrying down.

"Four."

"I'm not coming back. There's nothing you can say that'll make me change my mind. Do you think I didn't think it through before I came back? I calculated all the possibilities and I know what I'm doing. This was the only thing I could have done. If you were me, you'd have done the same thing."

"I _am_ you," she said. "Near enough. Why do you think the others sent me here, to you and Leonard?"

"Are you the only one?" he asked, walking over to the couch.

"No. Two and Three are here as well. They each have their own assignment."

"What about One?"

The number thing was starting to get a little confusing. Leonard could see why they opted for names as well as numbers in the end.

"He decided to keep an eye on things back home. He's concerned about the effect your actions will have on us."

"There won't be an effect, I told you. I calculated everything in the three years after—" He stopped abruptly, looking across at Leonard. "You know. I had plenty of time to think."

"You were always too emotional. You were never right after Zero. Do you really think things wouldn't change if this got out to the mass-produced models?" She grabbed Hikaru's collar and pulled him down to her height. "Do you think you're the only one who'd try to change things? Recent history in other timelines would be littered with mourning cyborgs. One theorises that the quantum consequences could destabilise the entire multiverse."

"One is constrained by his reliance on logic," he said, pulling away. "There's nothing wrong with feeling."

"Your _feeling_ is what got you into this mess. You don't think it's going to happen again in this timeline? He'll die again, Hikaru, and then what will you do?"

"Okay," Leonard interrupted. He wasn't feeling any less unsettled by the entire situation. "This conversation is over."

"You're not perfect just because they stopped after making you," Hikaru snapped, then held up his hands when Leonard turned to face him. "Sorry; it's over."

"I know you're here because you want to take Hikaru back with you to the future, but I don't know _why_ ," he said. "Everything's been fine here since he arrived."

"As I said, One's theory is that every universe—every timeline—will be destabilised by the misplaced energy. A single cyborg is bad enough, but if others begin trying it, the result could be catastrophic. It's better that Four returns with us before any damage _is_ done. I won't ask if you're prepared to take the risk, because I don't believe you're capable of comprehending it." She looked vaguely anxious for a moment. "I don't mean that as an insult, Leonard. You were never a physicist and unless things are even more different than our projections suggested, I don't believe you are one now."

"No offence taken," he said. "But it's just a theory, correct? You don't have any proof?"

Hikari shifted her weight to her other foot. "We're here because we can't risk it. If we take Four home and we're wrong, nothing happens. But if we're right and we leave him here anyway, that might be the end of everything."

"I'm happy here," Hikaru said. "There's nothing you can do to make me leave and you know it. Things are different now."

"They shouldn't be," she said.

"I don't know about you two, but I'm hungry," Leonard said, sensing that they might be about to launch into another argument. "I don't feel like cooking. Let's get Chinese. Your usual, Hikaru?"

"Yes, please, and can you—?"

"I'll order extra fried rice," he said, nodding. "Hikari?"

She looked at him in surprise. "Me?"

"What do you want to eat?"

"Sweet and sour chicken, please," she said, still sounding surprised. It wasn't much, but it was a very human reaction and it helped. "Thank you."

"You're a guest," Leonard said. "You get to eat with us, even if you are here to take Hikaru back to the future." A thought occurred to him. "If I go down to pick up the food, you're not going to spirit him away, are you?"

Hikaru answered for her. "That's not possible; I have to go willingly. Otherwise she'd have taken me as soon as I walked into the apartment."

"Good to know." He found the number for the nearest good Chinese place and called in their order, while Hikaru and Hikari stood awkwardly together and talked in low voices. Leonard wasn't sure he even wanted to know what they were discussing. It probably involved the other him.

Life was so much simpler three years ago.

The food arrived around half an hour later, and he did leave them in the apartment while he went downstairs to collect it. After Hikari, Leonard didn't feel entirely comfortable letting someone into his building when he couldn't see what they looked like. Of course, if it was one of the other cyborgs posing as the delivery girl, she could probably get in on her own strength, but he _felt_ more secure this way.

When he got back upstairs, the two of them were looking guilty.

"What did you do?" he asked. "Were you talking about me?"

"No," Hikaru said insincerely, reaching for the bag of food. Leonard handed it off to him, but not before taking out the fortune cookies and throwing them directly into the trash.

"What?" he asked when they both stared at him. "You two already know what's going to happen and people can't seem to stop telling me about the future. I'm tired of it."

They each took the food they'd ordered—lo mein for Hikaru and moo shu pork for Leonard—and sat down to eat with the TV turned on for background noise. Leonard noticed that both Hikaru and Hikari used their chopsticks in exactly the same way, right down to the smallest of movements, though she ate far more slowly than he did. There wasn't a lot of conversation during the meal. He didn't know if it was because they'd said everything they needed to say to each other while he was out of the apartment or if they just weren't comfortable saying it in front of him.

Whatever the reason, it was only when they were all nearly finished eating that anyone spoke.

"This was delicious," Hikari said. "I don't know how to thank you." She set her mostly empty box down on the coffee table.

"Like I said before, you're a guest."

"He's never told you, has he?" she asked, moving closer to him. "Hikaru wasn't the only one."

"Five— _Hikari_ ," Hikaru said.

"What are you talking about?" Leonard put his food down as well and turned to look at her.

"I've missed you, too," she said, reaching up to touch his hair lightly. "Fewer grey hairs now, but... you hardly looked any different the last time I saw you. That was the last time we were together."

"Listen," he said, jerking his head away from her hand. "I don't know if you're saying what I think you're saying, but that was another timeline. Things are different here."

Hikari blinked at him. "You didn't tell him, Four?"

"I didn't need to tell him," Hikaru said.

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here," Leonard said in frustration. "Here's the thing, Hikari: I don't care what happened in the future. I don't give a good goddamn how things were then or who I was with, because that was the other me and I'm not him—and I never will be. It's just me and Hikaru and Jo, and frankly, that's the way I prefer it." He thought he saw a flash of relief cross Hikaru's face at that. "Got it?"

Hikari nodded. "Yes."

"Good. Excuse me." He got up and stalked into the third bedroom, which was nearest. The whole evening had veered between emotional extremes that Leonard really didn't know if he could deal with right then. He really needed a few minutes alone before he felt ready to go back out. He went through to the en suite and splashed his face with water before returning.

Something made him pause at the bedroom door; they were talking again, but this time he could hear every word.

"Where are you going now?" Hikaru asked.

"Back."

"For good?"

"For good. You were right, Hikaru. You both were. He _is_ different to the Leonard we knew."

"He isn't grieving."

"Don't let him," she said.

"What are Two and Three planning?"

"If he grieves, nothing changes."

It was cryptic and if Hikari said anything to clarify what she meant, Leonard didn't hear it—he moved away from the door before either one of them could notice him standing there. He went back to the bathroom and flushed the toilet before re-entering the main space of the apartment.

Hikaru was alone in the sitting room. "She asked to use the bathroom," he said before Leonard could ask.

"Is she using ours?"

"It was closest. Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Leonard replied honestly. "I'll be happier when she's gone."

"She's going to leave. And I'm not going with her," Hikaru added hastily, as if it was in doubt. Maybe it had been, but it wasn't anymore.

"Good. I need you to stick around."

"For Jo?"

"For all of us," he said. "It wouldn't be the same without you hanging around all the time."

Hikaru smiled crookedly at him. Neither had to say anything else.

Another toilet in the apartment flushed and Hikari emerged from their bedroom. "I should leave now," she said. "Thank you again for the dinner. It was wonderful."

"You're welcome," Leonard said. He walked her to the door, Hikaru trailing behind them both, and opened it for her. "Thanks for stopping by," he added, only slightly sarcastically.

"I'm sorry you can't see sense," Hikari said. There could have been a hint of sarcasm in that, too. "Goodbye, Leonard."

It was the last time he ever saw her.

Leonard found the photo a few days after that, trapped between the bed and his nightstand. He was in it, right in the middle of the frame and looking no more than five years older than he did currently, with one arm around Hikaru's shoulder. Christine and Jim were at his right—again, looking a little older than he knew them now—with two women and a man with curly hair who he didn't recognise. One of the women was black with striking features and the other, slightly taller, had red hair and sparkling blue eyes.

On his left side, next to Hikaru, stood Hikari and two more men he didn't know. The man nearest Hikaru had a huge, friendly smile spread across his face. The other appeared serious, tall and pale and slightly foreboding. He was a little surprised that Chris wasn't in the photo, but maybe he was the one who'd taken it. Leonard turned the picture over and looked at the back. Maybe whoever had owned it had written something there about who was pictured.

In his own handwriting, it read: "Completion of the Cybernetic Genome Project, 23 October, 2165." Leonard's hands shook a little and he sat down on the edge of the bed abruptly, looking at the front of the photo again. Three of the people in it were the other cyborgs, the ones he hadn't met—in this timeline. The other two, he assumed, must be the European scientists whose names he couldn't quite remember at the moment.

"Hikaru," he called. "Come here for a minute."

"What's wrong?" Hikaru asked, walking into the bedroom. His Orion Automata ID badge hung crookedly around his neck.

"I found this." He held the picture out.

"Where did you g—Hikari?"

He nodded. "I think she must have left it."

"It was yours," Hikaru said. "In the future. I left it behind when I came back. She must have brought it—I don't know why she'd bring it with her. Maybe because she thought it'd make me want to come home. Maybe she just didn't want to look at it any more."

"The people in the photo," Leonard said. "I only know who half of them are."

"That's Pavel Chekov," he said, pointing to the man who stood next to Jim. "He's Russian. A brilliant physicist. The women are Two and Three—Gaila and Nyota Uhura. Nyota is the only one of us who chose her own name."

"And the other two men?"

"Montgomery Scott, with the smile. He's Scottish and you call him Scotty. James started it and it just caught on."

"So the serious man must be One."

"Spock," Hikaru said, nodding.

" _Spock_? What kind of a name is _Spock_?"

"James started that, too."

Leonard's mouth twitched. "Why doesn't that surprise me any?"

Perhaps wisely, Hikaru chose not to answer that question. "Are you going to keep the photo?" he asked instead.

"Maybe I'll take it into the lab and we can pin it up for inspiration," he said lightly. "Once we're done with the nanorobots, we need something to work toward."

He was joking, but Hikaru seemed to take him seriously. "Good idea," he said. "James and Christine would probably be very interested in seeing it."

In the end, Leonard didn't take the photo to the lab, or even show it to Jim and Christine. He tucked it into the drawer of his nightstand, beneath several other photos. It turned out to be a bigger mistake than he could have anticipated.

***

Leonard didn't spend much time in the apartment. He slept there and showered there, but the rest of his time was spent either in the lab or the hospital with Jo. With Jocelyn still in New York and keeping her company, he didn't feel so bad about most of his days being dedicated to the recreation of the nanorobots that would—he couldn't afford to think in anything less than certainties—save his daughter's life. Every time he felt guilty about only seeing Jo for an hour or so a day, and sometimes less, he reminded himself that the sooner the nanorobots were finished, the sooner she'd be okay.

Christine's involvement in the project was more complex than Leonard really wanted to think about. There was currently no metal that would serve exactly the same purpose as the one Hikaru's nanorobots were constructed from, and to prevent Jo's body from rejecting them, some kind of genetic component was essential. Using every scrap of knowledge that she possessed, Christine set out to not only build an outer shell that would allow the nanorobots to pass as a natural part of Jo's immune system, but also—with the right materials made available—to reproduce and repair themselves. It was more than ambitious.

It was also impossible to do without the correct programming in the mechanical part of the nanorobots, which was where Jim came in. Leonard couldn't even wrap his mind around how it could be possible to program a machine to fix everything that could possibly go wrong with the human body, but as soon as Jim got a look at Hikaru's nanorobots, he seemed to understand immediately.

"And in comparison to that," Jim said, "Christine's replication thing will be as easy as getting laid in a whorehouse."

" _Jesus_ ," Christine said, wrinkling her nose. "What is your problem? Other than apparently needing to pay for sex, which doesn't surprise me."

"Hey, I _don't_ —"

"No, you walked right into that one," Leonard told him. "It's Christine's win."

"You're a biased judge."

It was easier to let him believe that than get into another disagreement.

Of the three, Leonard's job was objectively the easiest. All he had to do was build exact copies of the nanorobots. However, the nanorobots were literally microscopic—nearly quantum—and he'd never worked on such a small scale before. There was no margin for error. Most of the nanorobots he made in the beginning were flawed in one way or another, or damaged simply in the process of putting them together. Leonard began to wonder if it'd be easier to build the nanorobots on a more manageable scale and then make some kind of shrink-ray.

"That's a little ridiculous," Hikaru said, when Leonard brought it up one night in bed. "You shouldn't worry so much. You're going to do it."

"You're only saying that because the other me did it," he said.

"He did, and you're more motivated than he ever was. You still have her. You still have a chance." Hikaru nosed against Leonard's jaw. "I believe in you."

He grunted. "Sappy bullshit," he said. "You coming to the hospital with me tomorrow morning?"

"Doesn't Jocelyn normally go in the mornings?"

"I should probably talk to her face to face. I haven't since she got here."

 _Because of Barbara_ : the unspoken thought that hung between them.

"I'll pass," he said eventually. "I think Christine wants more nanorobot samples, so I should probably stay at the lab. I've been helping her with the cultures of Jo's cells, anyway. We're starting work on the organic casing soon."

"Which is why she needs more samples," Leonard said. "If I were less useless, she could have the real thing by now."

"You're going to do it," Hikaru repeated. His blind optimism wasn't enough to keep Leonard from lying awake for some time after Hikaru had fallen asleep against him, turning things over in his head.

He went to the hospital bright and early the next morning, bringing breakfast for himself and Jo. The food was better than in any hospital Leonard had ever worked at in the past, but he suspected she'd appreciate something a little out of the ordinary. Hopefully it would raise her spirits slightly; they didn't know yet if the first round of chemotherapy had been effective. Leonard wasn't holding out hope for a miracle, but he'd never tell anyone that.

Jo's eyes were shut as he approached her room, but they opened when he let himself in. "Daddy?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"

"That's charming," he said lightly. "I brought you pastries and that's the reaction I get?"

"You don't normally visit with me in the morning." She sat up slightly, peering at the bag in his hand. "Am I allowed pastries?"

"Don't worry; I cleared it with your nurse. And anyway," Leonard added, "you need to keep your strength up. If you can do that, they say you'll get to come home for a while."

"It's not home, though," Jo said. "It's here and I've never even seen it."

He set the bag down on the nightstand and hugged Jo carefully, mindful of the monitoring equipment that surrounded the bed. "Hikaru's done a great job with your room. You'll love it, I promise. And I know it isn't Georgia, but we live here now."

"I miss my friends," she whispered. "And I miss Janice. I wish we never moved here. I don't even have any friends now."

"That can't be true," Leonard said, trying to remember if he'd ever seen any other children in the hospital. None were springing to mind. "But if it is, things will change as soon as you're better. Once you start school here, you'll make lots of new friends."

Jo sighed heavily and lay back against the pillows. He dug through the bag and handed her a pastry that seemed to contain more chocolate and frosting than anything else, and Jo's eyes brightened immediately at the sight of it. Then he retrieved his own breakfast—a slightly less extravagant croissant—and settled into the chair next to the bed.

"Don't think this is going to happen often," he warned her.

"I won't," Jo said, and proceeded to demolish the pastry.

"Well," Leonard said. "At least you're not nauseated anymore." He ate his breakfast almost as quickly as Jo had eaten hers and was in the middle of washing down the last bite with a mouthful of coffee when the door opened again.

It was Jocelyn, carrying her second daughter, Barbara, who looked exactly like Jo did at that age—who looked exactly like _Leonard_ did at that age. He didn't want to say anything, or didn't know if there was anything he could say. He really didn't know which.

She stopped in her tracks at the sight of Leonard sitting in the room, then lifted Barbara off her hip and set her down on the bed with Jo. Barbara eyed Leonard cautiously and then scrambled closer to her big sister, burying her face in Jo's sleeve. With a pang, Leonard remembered Jo's shy stage when she was a toddler.

"Leonard," Jocelyn said in greeting.

"Jocelyn."

"I didn't expect you to be here. You usually aren't in the morning."

"I brought Jo some breakfast." He stood up from the chair, awkwardly wiping his hands on the sides of his trousers. "And I thought we should probably talk."

"Joanna, are you alright to mind Barbara for a moment while I talk to your father?" Jocelyn asked.

Jo nodded. "I can press the call button if I need help," she said. "But I think we'll be okay." She tilted her face up to receive a kiss on the cheek from Jocelyn, then turned to Barbara.

Without waiting to see if he was following her, Jocelyn strode back out of the room and into the corridor. Leonard followed her, shutting the door behind himself.

"What did you want to talk about?" she said. Her hair was loose today, flowing over her shoulders and belying the stiffness in her posture and her eyes.

"I wanted to thank you," Leonard said. "For coming here."

"I came for Joanna, not for you."

"I meant on her behalf. You've been here for a while now, and... well, frankly I didn't think you'd be able to manage that." He spotted that Jocelyn was about to object to that and hastily added, "Because of Clay and Barbara, I mean. Not because you don't love Jo or because you're a bad mother."

"Clay understands." She exhaled. "He'd be here but he's been so busy at work that he can't get away."

Leonard made a noncommittal noise.

"Was that the only thing you wanted to say?"

"No," he said eventually. "No, there was something else." He waited until the corridor was relatively empty, then said, "She's going to be okay. The job I took—it's medical as well as robotics. It's going to cure Jo completely, just as soon as we perfect it."

"That isn't how it works," she said. "You know cures don't happen that quickly. Even if they do, they have to be tested and re-tested. If Joanna relies on you to cure her, she—" Jocelyn broke off, raising her hand to her mouth. She took a deep breath. "She might not have the luxury of waiting."

"It won't be like that," Leonard said, though he was suddenly doubtful. He hadn't even stopped to consider testing and Jocelyn was definitely right on that one. "Trust me."

"Don't do anything stupid with our daughter's health, Leonard."

"Trust me, _Jocelyn_. I know what I'm doing."

"By the way," Jocelyn said suddenly. "I had Barbara tested. It seemed like the only sensible thing to do."

Leonard's heart leapt into his throat for a moment. "You mean—?"

"She wouldn't be a compatible bone marrow donor for Joanna, if it comes down to that." She looked at him sharply. "What did you think I meant? Leonard, you know I'm not going to do that. As far as everyone is concerned, Barbara is Clay's daughter. For all we both know, she _is_ Clay's daughter and you've just got this fool notion in your head for no good reason."

"She looks exactly like Jo did at two."

"They're half-sisters, of course they look alike."

"She looks like _I_ did when I was two," he argued.

"You're imagining things. You're projecting because you want her to be yours and, well. She isn't," Jocelyn said firmly.

"I'll believe that when I see a DNA test."

"The only thing that matters is that Joanna is ill and Barbara isn't a suitable donor." She stepped closer to Leonard and pointed a finger into his face. "This is not about _you_."

 _I know_ , he thought. "I have to get to work," he said aloud. "Give Jo my love."

"You're being childish."

"I'm late, that's all."

"Leonard," Jocelyn said. "You have time to say a proper goodbye to your daughter."

"Which one?" he muttered, which was definitely childish. But he went back into Jo's room and kissed her goodbye before he went back to the lab, though he tried not to look at Barbara at all.

He was the last to arrive at work that day, which wasn't much of a surprise considering his visit to the hospital. Hikaru was helping Christine while Jim had his head down on his side of the lab, typing furiously. Beside the clacking of his keyboard and the quiet murmur of conversation between Hikaru and Christine, the lab was silent and Leonard could get his own head down to try and solve the problems he kept encountering.

Unfortunately, the relative peace and quiet didn't last long. As soon as Jim had finished what he was doing, he decided to entertain himself by trying to wind up Christine. It got bad enough that after about an hour of it, Hikaru left—ostensibly for snacks, but Leonard knew otherwise. They kept sniping at each other until she put in her earbuds and connected to the company cloud, effectively cutting herself off from everyone else. Jim, sensing defeat, lapsed back into blissful silence.

"I'd have moved down here years ago if I'd known about the women," he said from across the room a short while later. He often started conversations that way; as if it was something everyone had already been talking about. Most of the time, no one was even talking to him when he came out with something like that.

"You didn't know there were women in New York?" Leonard asked incredulously.

"No, I knew that. I just didn't realise they'd want to have so much sex with me."

Christine made a noise of disgust from the far side of the lab, apparently having disconnected from the music some time before. "I'm just as surprised as you are," she said.

"You shouldn't be jealous just because I'm off the market now, Chris," he said. "I was saving myself for you, but you wouldn't have me. So I gave my virtue to another lady."

She snorted with laughter and then squinted at her sample and swore sharply. "Jim! Now I need to start this again. What's the matter with you?"

"Five foot ten inches of curvy redhead," he replied dreamily.

Leonard could almost hear Christine's eyes rolling. "Does she have a name?" he asked.

"Um, Gail or Gaily or something like that."

"And there's that famous Jim Kirk charm," she said. "Where's Hikaru? I need another sample of nanorobots since Jim made me contaminate the last one."

"I did _not_."

"He went out to get bagels and coffee," Leonard interrupted. "He doesn't like it when you fight."

"We're not fighting," Jim and Christine said in unison.

"You can't tell me you both enjoy doing this."

They looked at each other.

"Well, it's less boring than just working," Christine said. Jim nodded in agreement.

"Good god," Leonard said. He shut his eyes in exasperation and made a mental note to ask Hikaru if they'd end up as a couple in the future. By that point, it really wouldn't be a surprise to him. Of course, after everything he'd been through in the past three years thanks to Hikaru, nothing really surprised Leonard any more.

They continued to work with progress coming in fits and starts. Often if one person figured something out, the same would happen for someone else shortly after. Leonard, however, kept having difficulty with the construction of the nanorobots. Figuring out one thing almost always seemed to break something else that he'd fixed previously—but he had no choice other than to continue to try everything he could in the hope that something would click.

The breakthrough, when it came, was exactly that. There was no eureka moment; things just started to _work_ , even though Leonard was sure he'd tried the same methods before to no effect.

"No, you're doing it differently," Hikaru said.

"I thought you were going to cut back on the cryptic statements."

"That was only for Lent." He smiled at Leonard.

Jim, who seemed more jubilant by the day, walked past them. "Get a room," he said cheerfully. "Also, I think I'm finished."

"Finished?"

"With the programming. I just need Hikaru to check it to make sure it does everything it's supposed to do."

"Don't ask him to stay late so you can go out with your girlfriend, Jim."

Jim raised a hand to his throat in mock horror. "I would _never_."

"He knows about the last time," Hikaru said, pulling a chair up to Jim's desk.

"I would never _again_."

He spent the rest of the afternoon keeping half an eye on Hikaru and Jim to make sure that they were both working. It cut into his own productivity but it was worth it to make sure that no one was being taken advantage of. He knew that Hikaru was more than capable of taking care of himself and if he really didn't want to do something, he wouldn't. Jim just seemed more likely to push it.

In the end, it turned out that he needn't have worried. Hikaru got up and started getting ready to leave before Jim did, and Jim didn't try to stop him. And so it went for another few weeks, with Jim being almost unnaturally good-natured to everyone. Christine remarked on it a few times to begin with but when Jim never retorted, she eventually lapsed into slightly baffled silence.

It even positively affected everyone's productivity and Leonard found that he had slightly more free time than he had before. It wasn't helping him, though; he was sleeping badly, kept awake by an issue that was causing imperfect copies when the nanorobots attempted to replicate. Every extra free minute was a minute spent desperately trying to work out where he'd gone wrong.

After several sleepless nights at home spent tossing and turning, he decided it might be for the best to just stay in the lab. He ducked out briefly and got some dinner when everyone else left before returning. The lab was supposed to be empty. It _was_ empty when Leonard arrived and sat down with his sandwich, hoping to get to work on the problem straight away. They had established earlier on that the trouble lay in the nanorobots themselves and not their programming, and so Leonard was prepared for a long night while he attempted to work through the issue.

It was well after midnight when he heard voices in the corridor outside. That in itself wasn't unusual; plenty of people worked late, though when they did they usually didn't wander around the building. But the voices approached the door to Leonard's lab and stopped outside. There were two, he thought. It sounded like it might be Jim, and if Jim had brought his girlfriend here to try and impress her, Leonard was going to kill him—and enjoy doing it.

"So, this is my lab," Jim said, opening the door. There was a woman standing next to him wearing the kind of dress that Jocelyn used to wear when she wanted something.

Leonard stood up in preparation to tear into him but as soon as he recognised who Jim was with, he stopped dead. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Leonard, hey!" Jim said. "I didn't know you'd still be here. I just figured I'd bring Gaila by after our date so she could—"

"I am _not_ talking to you," Leonard snapped. "Gaila. Or do you prefer Two?"

She had the grace to look embarrassed. "Leonard," she said, pushing a loose curl behind her ear. "It's been a long time."

"You two know each other?" Jim asked, glancing between them.

"Actually, I've never met her. But I think she knows me very well. So I'll ask you again, Gaila: what are you doing here?"

"You know why we're here," Gaila said. "We have to preserve the timeline and return Hikaru to the future."

"And kill Jo in the process? That's why you got Jim to bring you to the lab, right? Were you going to take everything or just destroy it all?"

"You're a _cyborg_?" Jim blurted.

"I'm sorry, Jim," Gaila said, laying a hand on his wrist.

Jim stepped away from her, raising his hands to his head. "Seriously, this is fucked up. You were using me to get in here, weren't you?"

"You were using me for sex. It seemed fair," she said.

"You two can hash this out somewhere else," Leonard interrupted. "Is Nyota with you somewhere, Gaila? Because I want you to find her and tell her that it's over and you're both going home. And you're going to stay there; you're not going to bother us ever again. Just because things are different here doesn't make them worse. You've got no right to try and change that."

"Three is here," Gaila said. "She's waiting outside—for my signal. We were going to..." She trailed off, looking around the lab.

"I can guess what you were going to do. What gives you the right to kill my daughter?"

"Joanna's already dead," she said.

"Not my Jo," Leonard said. "She's alive and she's going to stay alive."

Gaila stared at him for a moment. "I understand that this is difficult for you but it's really for the best," she said.

"I've been over this with Hikari. Find Nyota and get out of my timeline." He stepped towards her, herding her towards the door. "I know you can't just take Hikaru back, so you haven't got any power. And I _know_ you can't hurt Jo directly. I can make sure you never get close to this building again, let alone inside this lab. It's over."

"You don't get to decide if this is over or not."

"If I don't, neither do you. Jim, call security."

"But I—" he started.

"Jim, _go_."

The corners of his mouth turned down and Jim went, making the call from the phone just outside the lab.

"Leonard," Gaila said, pursing her lips. She really was beautiful. If Leonard hadn't known who she was in advance, he might have fallen for it just the way Jim had.

"I don't want to talk to you any more than I want to talk to him."

"You're just as stubborn as you ever were," she said. "I'm sorry you can't see sense."

"When we build you in this timeline," he said conversationally, "we're going to use Hikaru as the model for empathy levels."

She frowned. "Sometimes feelings need to be put aside for the greater good. We feel for you. I'm not happy with it but there's more at stake here."

Jim stuck his head through the door. "Can I come back in?"

"Jim, I really don't want to look at you right now!" Leonard barked.

Jim actually flinched and backed away again, closing the door behind him.

In the moment of Jim's interruption, Leonard took his eyes off Gaila and she'd taken the opportunity to slip past him and into the lab. She was standing in front of the workbench that housed the most recent generation of nanorobots.

"Don't—" he started, but she had already picked up a petri dish. Leonard's heart leapt into his mouth.

"Quaint," Gaila said, peering into it. "You're nowhere near finished, are you?"

"Put them down," Leonard said. He held out one hand towards her, as if that would have any effect. "Gaila, please. You'd be harming a human being. Jo is alive and if you destroy those nanorobots, she won't have any chance. Whatever Spock told you, however he justified it, he's wrong. You can't say for sure that she'd have another chance without them. She _didn't_ , once before. You know that." He knew he was babbling; he just needed to get the nanorobots away from her before something went badly wrong.

Gaila ignored him. "Jim said you weren't finished yet but I didn't realise you were still this far from completion," she said. "Hasn't Hikaru been helping?"

"He has. Please give me the petri dish."

"He never was very good at the technical side of things."

" _Gaila_ ," Leonard said. He was starting to get desperate. Part of him itched to snatch the petri dish from her grip, but he knew that Gaila's reactions were too fast for him to manage it. She needed to agree of her own accord.

"Why should I?" Gaila asked. "Give me a reason. Just one."

Leonard didn't know what to say. He stared at Gaila for what felt like an eternity.

"They're coming," Jim said from the other side of the door.

And then he knew. "Because," Leonard said to Gaila finally, "there's nothing more important than Jo."

She didn't say anything; she just nodded once, a faint look of sympathy in her eyes, and handed him the dish. Then Gaila stepped away from the workbench, letting Leonard put it back where it belonged, and walked calmly out of the lab. After checking that she hadn't touched anything else, Leonard followed her out.

The guards arrived shortly after that and caught Gaila by both arms, pulling her away from Leonard and Jim and towards the elevator. She didn't struggle but it was quite clear that she wasn't going to make things easy for them, either.

"Jeez, lady, you're heavy," one of the men muttered.

Leonard and Jim followed after them. "Don't tell anyone about this," Jim said.

"No one would believe me."

"I meant Christine and Hikaru. Don't tell them, please."

"Hikaru has to know," Leonard said. When he saw the look on Jim's face, he relented a little. "I won't tell Christine, don't worry. I think you should, but I won't."

"Jesus."

They stopped in the lobby and watched as the guards ejected Gaila from the building. Another woman—Nyota, clearly—rushed up to her and they spoke with each other rapidly before both looked back through the glass. Then they nodded slowly to Leonard before turning and walking away. It all seemed too simple, but Leonard couldn't pretend he wasn't relieved.

"That could have ended badly," he said.

"Leonard, I didn't know."

"You were lucky I was there."

"I didn't—I didn't know," Jim said again, brokenly. He sounded almost plaintive.

***

After Jo's third ineffective cycle of chemotherapy, Leonard insisted that she be discharged from the hospital and allowed to come home while she wasn't actively receiving the medication. He was sure by then that they were—at most—weeks from having working nanorobots and it would be far easier to administer them to Jo if she wasn't under constant surveillance in a hospital.

The only downside to it was that Hikaru's time in the lab was severely limited. Jo had a tutor who spent four or five hours of the day with her, but for the rest of the time, someone had to be at home and that someone was almost always Hikaru. His partial absence didn't really slow things down at all.

Fifteen days after Jo's discharge, the first nanorobot created a perfect replica of itself. It happened overnight; when everyone arrived the next morning, they found a petri dish containing rather more nanorobots than it had the night before. After isolating which had replicated, Leonard separated it and its copies from the others and—with some regret—disposed of the failures.

"Are we done?" Jim asked. He was still unusually subdued after discovering the truth about Gaila.

"Not yet. Now we're field testing your code," Leonard told him. "If something doesn't work, we strip it out and start again."

The first part of the testing was to ensure that each copy was identical to every other copy. There was no room for error; if things started changing after they were placed inside a human being, there was no telling what might happen.

The copies already made were split into two groups: the first remained in the petri dishes and the second was placed inside a constructed circulatory system to ensure that the change in conditions wouldn't alter anything else. Christine and Jim also wanted to be sure that the upper limit they had imposed on the number of copies the nanorobots would make was obeyed. While it was partially affected by resources available, Jim had also programmed in a fail-safe so that—in the event of an unlimited amount of resources—the nanorobots wouldn't replicate to the point where they clogged up the blood vessels and killed the person they were supposed to help.

It took them a few more weeks to get to the point where everyone seemed satisfied that they were behaving in the manner intended. When they reached that point, Leonard was ready to give them to Jo. He looked through the results of their testing on the nanorobots reaction to normal and cancerous cells and he was finally sure that everything was right.

"I'm going to give them to her tonight," he said. "We can't afford to waste any more time."

"We can't just inject them into your daughter," Christine said, looking vaguely horrified. "We need to test them on a person somehow. What if they're not right and they make her worse?"

"How easily can you change the genetic component?" he asked.

"Now they're replicating on their own without any issues, it should be easy to introduce a different genetic makeup for the next generation," she said, furrowing her brow. "Are you saying...?"

"We'll test them on me."

"That's stupid and dangerous," she said. "For god's sake, Leonard, what happens if something does go wrong? Then Jo won't be any better and she'll have lost her father to boot. Why would you be so reckless?"

"Because we don't have any other options," he said. "You're right. We have to test them on a human before giving them to Jo and it makes sense that it's me."

"If I—" Hikaru started, but Leonard cut him off with a raised hand.

"You're not human," he said. "And your nanorobots might compensate for any flaws in the design that could hurt a human."

"Which means I won't _die_ if something goes wrong," he said hotly.

"It means we won't know if something goes wrong. It has to be me."

Christine rolled her eyes. "Well. No time like the present, then."

Hikaru and Leonard both gaped at her.

"I'm serious," she said. "If you _have_ to be this pig-headed, at least do it when you're with us so we can observe you and get help if you need it. It'll take a few hours to replicate enough nanorobots encased in your DNA but we can do it tonight."

"Should we call James?" Hikaru asked. "Maybe he should be here as well."

"No point," she said, shaking her head. "Once the nanorobots are inside someone, he can't change the programming."

"Are you being efficient because you're trying to make me change my mind?" Leonard said, suddenly suspicious.

"I would never. Open your mouth; I need a swab of your DNA."

While the nanorobots created a new generation of themselves with Leonard's DNA, Christine gave him the best general health check she could without being in a real hospital. She measured everything she could with the equipment at hand, from his blood pressure to his body fat percentage.

"I don't think that's necessary," Leonard said of the latter.

"If this is the only testing we're undertaking, I want to be as thorough as possible," Christine said severely. "If we had access to an X-ray generator, I'd be measuring your bone density."

"I think the next lab has an X-ray generator," Hikaru said. "I was talking to one of their lab techs over lunch a few weeks ago and she mentioned it."

"Can you go ask them if we can borrow it for a little while?"

Leonard groaned softly.

She finished up by drawing two vials of blood to test and compare, then checked on the nanorobots that were quietly going about their business. "I think we probably have enough now," Christine said, peering through her microscope. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I'm sure. You're right; they have to be tested."

"Eat something first," Hikaru said, offering him a cookie. When he pursed his lips, Hikaru said, "You just had blood drawn, so you probably need it."

"Two vials, not two pints," Leonard pointed out. He took the cookie anyway, watching Christine prepare a syringe and a needle as he ate it.

"Good thing they're microscopic," she said. "Imagine the needle I'd have to use if they weren't."

"I'd rather not."

He closed his eyes for the injection itself and Hikaru held his hand, which was slightly embarrassing. Another part of Leonard was glad for it. He wasn't a huge fan of injections at the best of times and as much faith as he had in the work of his team, it was a little nerve-wracking to be the sole test subject for something that could potentially save hundreds of millions of people.

"All done," Christine said. "For now."

They observed him for a week after injecting the nanorobots into his bloodstream. Christine wanted it to last longer but Leonard was impatient to get on with things as soon as he knew that he wasn't going to drop dead. Hikaru and Jim stayed out of it entirely, though Leonard suspected that Hikaru probably agreed with Christine. Eventually, though, she couldn't hold off the inevitable any longer and he insisted that everything was fine for him to proceed.

"I don't feel any different," Leonard said. "There aren't any ill-effects because there aren't any effects. I'm pretty damn sure these things are safe."

"That's not scientific," she told him. "But at least all your vital systems are stable and your body's functions seem mostly unchanged."

"It's good enough for me. Do I have your permission to proceed?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Christine looked as if she wanted to stick her tongue out at him. "As if I could stop you," she said finally. "I'm just not entirely comfortable with the ethics of it."

"I know," he said. "And I'm sorry that I put you in this position but Jo's going to die without this. I had to do something."

"I know," she echoed. "I came to work for you knowing. At least we've tested them a little. Here." She handed him a capped syringe filled with a clear liquid and—though there was no possible way to see them—the nanorobots.

"Thanks, Christine."

"Good luck, Leonard."

He put the syringe in a case and then into his bag, taking it home with him. Hikaru had already put Jo to bed by the time he arrived, though Leonard could tell by her breathing that she wasn't quite asleep yet. He shooed Hikaru away before going into her bedroom and turning on the lamp on her nightstand.

"Jo, are you awake?"

"No."

He sat down on the side of her bed. "I need to talk to you about something important."

"Okay." Jo rubbed her eyes and sat up. "What is it?"

"I have something that might be able to make you better. Something that won't make you sick like the chemo. But the thing is," he adds hastily, "it's not a standard treatment. You wouldn't be able to tell anyone about this, not even your mom. I don't know if it'll work, but it definitely won't hurt you."

"That's kind of a big deal," she said.

"It is, which is why you get to decide if you want it or not. I'm not going to force you if it's something you don't want."

"If it works, can I stop having chemo?"

"If it works, you'll never have to have chemo again in your life."

Jo pulled at a loose thread on her comforter, looking thoughtful. "What are the risks?" she asked.

"No risks," he said after a long pause. Leonard shouldn't have been surprised that she'd ask something like that, but he was. Obviously her extended stay in the hospital had changed the way Jo thought about her health. "It either works or it won't do anything at all."

She gave him a sceptical look.

"I wouldn't lie to you, darlin'. I worked on it myself; I should know."

"Okay, I guess. Why can't I tell anyone?"

"Because it's such a new treatment that no one else can have it yet. Right now, it's just for you."

Her eyes narrowed again, but she nodded. "Okay."

His hands shaking slightly, he set out all the equipment he needed on the covers of Jo's bed. Leonard checked and double-checked that everything he needed was easily accessible before he pulled on a pair of gloves and slid the tourniquet up above Jo's elbow. He tightened it too much the first time and she whimpered slightly.

"That _hurts_ ," she said.

"Sorry, Jo," he said, and quickly loosened it again. After another moment he tightened it to a more tolerable level, and then found a vein. He paused with the needle in position, hovering just above the surface of her skin. If he stopped now, there was no chance of anything going wrong. They could continue with the chemotherapy and Jo might get better despite what Hikaru had told him. Then again, she might not. The idea scared the hell out of him, even more than the possibility that the nanorobots might malfunction.

"Daddy?" Jo asked nervously. Her voice pulled him back to reality.

"You'll feel a little scratch." Leonard took a deep breath and shifted his grip on her arm before administering the injection as quickly and painlessly as he could. "All done," he said, pressing a square of gauze to Jo's arm. After a few moments, he replaced the gauze with a band-aid.

"That's it?" Jo asked.

"I hope so."

"Can I go back to sleep?"

"You sure can."

He tucked the covers around her again and said goodnight. "Come get me if you need anything," Leonard added. When Jo didn't answer—already fast asleep—he touched her hair gently and got up, going through to the bedroom. The used syringe had to be checked for any lingering nanorobots and safely disposed of, so Leonard put it in his bag before he went over to Hikaru. Then he dumped the gloves in the trash.

"Did you do it?" Hikaru asked. He reached up from the bed and stroked Leonard's elbow. "Come here."

"I did it," Leonard said, lying down next to him. "Do you think it's going to work?"

"I hope so," he said. "We did everything right. But this is where it really becomes new to me as well as you. The part where Jo gets better."

"About time. I'm sick of you being a know-it-all."

"I know." He kissed Leonard carefully, but meaningfully.

And she _did_ start getting better. It was slow at first, with the results gradually improving until the nanorobots built up to the level in her bloodstream where they were at their most effective. Even with the technology, the results weren't instant; to the outside observer, Jo looked as if she was being cured by the continuing chemotherapy cycles. Leonard was more than fine with that, even though he wanted Jo to be better as soon as possible. People would ask questions if her leukaemia vanished overnight.

The days when Jo was mostly better but before she started at her new school were some of the best Leonard had spent with her. He cut back on his hours at work considerably for a few weeks and used the extra time to do everything he could think of doing to make his daughter happy. Thanks to Chris' connections, that even included taking her to a Lady Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden. Hikaru and Jo were thrilled; Leonard less so. Still, it was worth it to see Jo singing and dancing and laughing and, above all else, _healthy_.

Leonard stopped viewing New York as a series of grey streets between the apartment, the lab and the hospital. With Jo, the city took on a life of its own. They went to the park or the movies, and when they came home again, it really _felt_ like home.

"It's good, here, isn't it?" Jo said one afternoon.

It was raining hard and showing no signs of abating, so they were watching old movies on TV instead of going out. Hikaru had fallen asleep quite some time earlier and was draped over Leonard, his breath tickling the side of Leonard's neck with every exhalation. Jo was curled up in the armchair.

"The apartment or New York?" Leonard asked.

"Both, I guess." She turned away from the TV and faced him. "Do I have to go to school on Monday?"

" _Yes_ ," he said firmly. Jo may have been genuinely nervous about going to school but Leonard didn't believe it. He was sure she was just testing the limits of his patience. It didn't annoy him. If she had the energy for that, she must be feeling much better.

"Not fair."

"You have such a cruel father," Leonard agreed. "Good thing he loves you."

Jo came over and perched on the arm of the sofa, leaning in and dropping a kiss onto the top of Leonard's head. "I love you too, Daddy," she said. "Even if you are gonna make me go to school."

Leonard pulled her onto his lap and hugged her tightly, then tickled her sides until her laughter woke Hikaru.

***

He never told Jocelyn what he'd done but he did tell Chris, who gave Leonard a stern talking to as a result of his actions. He could have tried to keep things a secret but Chris knew enough—about Jo's illness as well as what Leonard was using Orion Automata's resources for—that he would have probably put it all together, even if Leonard had tried to keep it from him.

"It reflects badly on me and it reflects badly on the company. If something had gone wrong, it would have been _over_."

"It worked, didn't it?" Leonard asked gruffly.

"You were lucky and you know it," Chris said. "You injected something into your daughter without any kind of prior testing."

"Actually, we tested it on me."

Chris made a pained noise and put his head in his hands for a moment. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just tell me that."

"Look, you can do any kind of testing you need to do before you market the nanorobots. On animals, on people, whatever has to be done," Leonard said. "But we didn't have time to wait for that with Jo. No one ever has to find out what happened with her."

"In any case, I'm going to have to take the project away from you. Another team can do the testing. I understand that might be frustrating for you, but..." He spread his hands apologetically.

"Am I being fired?"

"Not at all," Chris said. "Though if you ever do anything like that again, you probably will be. But for now, I'm just moving you and your team to a slightly different project. I'm not sure how you managed, but somehow you put together the perfect core team for something I've wanted to get started on for a while. It's called the Cybernetic Genome Project."

"Cyborgs?"

"It's highly classified at the moment. If you're interested, I'll get you clearance."

"I think we'd all be interested, but I need to speak to Christine, Jim and Hikaru first. I can't decide for them."

"Of course not," Chris said. "Let me know when you have and I'll arrange a meeting to brief you."

"I'll go down and talk to them now," Leonard said.

"I mean it, Leonard. Don't ever do anything like that to me again."

"Everything by the book from now on." Leonard pushed the chair back and got up, heading out of the office. As he started to open the door, Chris spoke again.

"By the way," he said. "I'm thrilled to hear that Jo is okay. Really."

He nodded a few times, not quite trusting himself to speak, and took the elevator back down to the lab.

"Did you get fired?" Jim asked the moment he stepped through the door.

"Not today. Chris wants us to start work on the Cybernetic Genome Project."

" _Finally_ ," he said. "But he doesn't know we know about it, right?"

"That's right. So when he briefs us, try to look slightly surprised."

Christine and Hikaru were sitting with their heads together on her side of the lab, deep in conversation. They could have been talking about anything, from work to the future to how much less annoying Jim had been since he realised he'd been seduced by a cyborg. Leonard couldn't judge him for it—there was something about them. There was definitely something about Hikaru, at the very least, who had come from nowhere and changed everything.

Four years ago, he had no idea he'd ever feel like this about someone again—let alone someone who was so normal and so _beyond_ normal at the same time. If he could change the circumstances of Hikaru's return, he would, but now Jo was healthy and everything was settled, Leonard was actually happy.

Hikaru obviously sensed that someone was looking at him, because he glanced up at Leonard and smiled. It made Leonard's stomach flip in an extremely adolescent manner.

"Can you guys come over here?" he said, pushing the feeling down for the moment. "I need to talk to you all about something."

When everyone was standing next to him, Leonard pinned the photo Hikari had left behind onto the noticeboard. "This is what we're aiming for," he said, pointing at it. "I don't know how long it's going to take us but we're going to build these cyborgs, with the help of these two men. Hikaru's told you about them before."

"Hikaru's middle name is Exposition," said Jim. Everyone ignored him.

"I don't have any information pertaining to the genetic code or programming of the other models," Hikaru said. "I can't help with anything but my own."

"Then we're going to have to do it from scratch."

"How do we do that?" Christine asked.

"The same way we did it before. First, we find Pavel Chekov and Montgomery Scott," Leonard said. "Let's take it from there."


End file.
